


Finding Shiro

by Larathia



Series: VLD S5+ AU [2]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Black Paladin Keith (Voltron), Gen, ship free - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-11
Updated: 2018-04-03
Packaged: 2019-03-29 17:59:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 47,610
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13932312
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Larathia/pseuds/Larathia
Summary: Continuing on from TWYMB, we're at a very different place from where season 5 went. So, between seasons 5 and 6, the challenge becomes 'how do those events affect things' and 'how do we get to some places from very different directions'. Ship free and staying that way, but never doubt these paladins love each other in their own ways.I'm going for a question that hasn't really been answered yet - *where is the real Shiro*?





	1. Not Much Need For A Leader

It was an awkward little reunion, with Takashi bringing Keith in tow like an errant kitten being dragged back to the nest. But the other Paladins hadn't wasted the time, so there were only quiet little shoulder clasps rather than incriminations.

Takashi exhaled slowly, watching them. "I don't... want to go," he admitted. "But I'm glad you understand why I need to."

"When we do find Shiro, what do you want to do?" asked Allura.

"Let me know, I guess," said Takashi. "He'll probably at least want to meet me, but we should probably do that on our own terms, if you don't mind too much."

"I'll tell Kolivan about Operation Kuron," said Keith. "But if the Blades haven't heard about it by now, they may not be in a position to find much out. We may do better trying to intercept reports from the officers assigned to that operation to central command. Which means we're looking more at Matt, Pidge, and Hunk's skills."

Pidge blinked. "What, do you think they'd use 'Operation Kuron' in their subject lines or something?" she asked. "We still need somewhere to start."

"...I escaped from a cruiser," said Takashi slowly, thinking it all out. "There was an ice planet nearby, with rebels hidden at a listening station." He paused. "Uh. I think I owe them a ship, actually."

"That's a place to start," said Pidge, nodding. "Matt may know about the listening station. If he doesn't, someone else will."

"The cruiser will have moved on," Keith mused. "But their logs might still be useful. Whatever Takashi's lab-cruiser sent out, we can decode it now."

Takashi nodded. "Sounds like a plan," he agreed. "Looking back...I was definitely allowed to escape. So there would have been reports from the cruiser about things being in motion. I can give you a search range for dates, at least, if you can find that outpost. But...I definitely do owe them a ship. And probably food."

"Food?" asked Hunk. "If they need food then I can probably help smooth things over. Can't help you with the ship part though."

"That won't be hard," Pidge pointed out. "We're on Olkarion. They could build a few small ships. One for Takashi, one to replace whatever that outpost lost."

"Short range orbital craft," said Takashi. "Meant to transfer supplies from a long range ship to the surface."

"...Why would the Blades not be able to find out about something like this?" asked Lance all at once. "I mean...finding things out is what they _do_."

"Yes," said Keith. "But this sounds like a small-scale, highly classified operation. There might be maybe five people in the Empire that even know it exists. That's probably worked to our advantage, honestly, because if those handful of people have been busy chasing Lotor for Zarkon it might explain why Takashi's...triggers weren't pulled. But the smaller an operation, the harder it is for the Blades to get an agent integrated.  And we're talking about something that smacks of Haggar's work on top of it. Nobody wants to cross Haggar; Ulaz was in a very rare position that was easily lost."

"I guess...we need to get going," said Hunk slowly. "But I don't want to. We didn't do this to leave you behind, Takashi."

"You did this to set me  _free_ , Hunk," Takashi replied. "Believe me, it's a gift I intend to make the most of. You'd best get going." One by one he pulled them in for hugs, Hunk then Pidge then Lance, Allura, and lastly - and carefully - Keith. "I won't drop off your radar, but it'll take me a little while to get a new direction. Take care of yourselves."

The group was quiet, as they headed back to the castleship. The Olkari seemed to expect that, and let them walk in peace.

Once back on the castleship, Keith headed for the bridge. "You're all welcome to listen if you want to," he said. "But I'll need Pidge and Hunk."

"Sure," said Pidge quietly. Hunk was subdued too, but they fell into step behind Keith as if nothing at all were wrong. Lance and Allura shared a look, and joined the group. 

Keith wasn't any happier than anyone else, but the others could see that resolve overrode reluctance. His mind was made up. Once on the bridge, he opened a comm link. "Kolivan," he said aloud.

The image of Kolivan soon flickered to life before them, solemn as ever. "Keith," he replied. "What news?"

"The Empire managed to plant a clone among the paladins of Voltron," said Keith. "The man we thought was Shiro was not. The threat he represented has been partially neutralized, but he confirms there are more clones out there. The project is called Operation Kuron. Can the Blades be of help?"

Kolivan's eyes widened. "A clone?" he echoed. "The man who freed a third of the Empire is a  _clone_? I advise not spreading that news, Black Paladin. It would destabilize the entirety of the coalition."

Allura nodded to that, responding, "We don't intend to make a public announcement, but we do need information."

Keith nodded too. "You’re owed our honesty, Kolivan, and we trust your discretion. But we've also got to get to the bottom of this.  Have any Blades uncovered any news of an Operation Kuron?"

"No," Kolivan frowned. "But we will make finding out a priority. What leads can you offer?"

"We know only that the lab is based on a cruiser," said Keith. "That was near an ice world around the time when the man we thought was Shiro was recovered. We do intend to speak to the rebel captains to see if we can track down which world he landed on. We'll let you know when we find that out."

"Hm," said Kolivan slowly. "If the lab is on a cruiser then one of our listening stations may have intercepted reports. It will take time to contact them and verify this. Our thanks to the Green Paladin for her assistance in cracking secure codes."

"Anytime," said Pidge. "And on that note, if Hunk and I can help you guys out - maybe make some new listening posts or something - let us know."

The older Galra looked...surprised, if that were fair to be said. "Thank you, Green Paladin," he said. "Such work would be of great assistance. I will speak with the others and have specifics for you soon."

The screen went dark, and Keith looked to the others. "Do we have any leads we can follow on our own, to track down this ice world?"

"I don't think so," said Pidge. "From what Takashi told us, it's a lot like the situation I found Matt in - a hidden base, meant only to monitor traffic. Nothing goes out, because then the base could be located. We're going to have to ask the rebel leaders if they recognize anything in Takashi's description of the people assigned to that base. And if that doesn't work...get a list of the bases on ice worlds or asteroids and go from there."

Keith nodded slowly, thinking over what he remembered of what Takashi had said of that time. Hopefully it would be enough. The others apparently wanted to stay for this chat too, as he opened a line to Olia's ship.

"Captain Olia...Paladin," she said, ending on a note of surprise as she took in Keith's change of costume. "What can we do for you?"

"We're looking for a specific outpost," Pidge interjected. "Ice world. Maybe nearish Thayserix. Currently manned by two rebels on a five year posting? Lots of ramen? Does any of that ring a bell?"

Olia looked from Keith to Pidge, evidently not clear if there was a chain of command in play or not. But apparently, it also didn't matter. She scratched absently under her chin as she thought it over. "You mean Vakala and Remdax?" she asked. "Vakala's a little fellow, moustache, about so high," she gestured with one hand, "Remdax is much bigger. I know of them."

"Could you give us their coordinates?" asked Keith. "It's very important that we speak with them."

"It's very important to _them_ that you not blow their cover," said Olia. "That outpost is near several major Galra routes. That's what makes it valuable. They've almost been discovered several times as it is - if the Lions of Voltron go tromping across the ice fields we'll have to give that outpost up as lost."

"Leave that part to me, captain," said Pidge. "We really just want to talk with them. I can get in and out without being seen. Oh, and they need a ship. I don't know if they've managed to transmit that."

"They haven't," said Olia dryly. "Again, if they send a signal for anything but an emergency, it's just too much of a risk. But we've got plenty of junkers, and that's all they need for running supplies. I'll get you one for them." She turned her attention to Keith. "So you're a Paladin again?"

"I'm flying Black now, captain," said Keith levelly. 

From the cant of Olia's ears, she wasn't entirely sure what to make of that news. "What happened to Shiro?"

They should have expected the question. But now it hung in the air, waiting for a volunteer. Keith kept his mouth shut; lying was never a gift he'd had, and now wasn't the time to try and pick the talent up.

"Shiro...has taken a leave of absence on discovering his brother is on Olkarion," said Allura, which got the other Paladins staring at her - partly in surprise, and partly in admiration. "His name is Takashi, and while we're told he has some adjusting to do, you may expect to meet him soon. They're very much alike. Almost twins."

Olia blinked at this. "Fine time to go taking a break," she said after a bit, "But family's important. All right." Which wasn't acceptance in the pure sense, the paladins could tell. It was simply that right now was not when Olia wanted to poke at it further. "So that means I ask you, Keith. How long do we keep this giant galra on my ship?"

Keith blinked. "Has she done something to you?" he asked.

"Maybe I'm not being totally clear here," said Olia with forced patience. "There's a giant galra on my ship. If there's not a good reason for that, I'd like it to stop."

Keith's jaw set. "That's why," he said, and this time the 'calm' was more an audible fingernail-grip on temper. "She's fighting the same fight you are, captain. She's taking the same risks you are. And she's also taking several risks you can't. The Blade of Marmora has realized the time's coming when the Empire will be gone. They'd like to not die with it. They'd especially like to not die at the hands of their own allies. I'm sure you understand. Elcris is there to help. you. In any and every way she can."

Olia's ears weren't entirely flat against her skull, but they were leaning in that direction. "Right," she said shortly. "If that's all, paladins," and the line went dead.

Lance sighed. "That was _almost_ diplomatic. Almost. Little shaky on the dismount there."

"I'm not apologizing for it," said Keith, almost snarling. "I know why she feels that way about the galra. But if we're going to have a way forward it's something she's _got_ to let go."

Allura reached over to put light fingers on Keith's shoulder. "You flew with her," she said, the few words packing in several unspoken questions.

The touch had a calming effect. "Yeah," said Keith. "She's a good captain. And I understand why she feels the way she does. But I also know Elcris. Elcris wouldn't do anything to hurt Olia or her crew. She doesn't deserve...that." he waved a hand at where the communication screen had been.

Hunk frowned now. "And you _did_?" he asked, a background rumble in his voice that suggested Olia was dropping several notches on his personal scale of people.

"It's fine, Hunk," said Keith, the tone communicating _drop it_ clearly. "Like I said. I know why she feels that way. I just...don't know how to make it stop. Neither does Kolivan. That's why he wanted me there, why he wants Elcris there. If the Blades aren't seen, then nothing will ever change. But - " and now Keith was getting frustrated too, words not being good friends of his at the best of times. "I don't know what to tell Olia, or Elcris, or any of them, to make it better. Make it work. They're  _not_  enemies."

Pidge adjusted her glasses. "Matt told me he feels intimidated by her," she said. "Like if he says hi, she might bite his head off."

Keith crossed his arms over his chest. "She's a galra," he said. "We have that effect." When he noticed the others blinking at him, he snapped, "Yes,  _we_. They did the same thing around me. You guys don't and that's part of why I like it here, but you're different. Most people out there are  _very_  careful around galra. Even galra that don't look much like galra." To Pidge, he said, "Tell Matt to watch what she does. If she stays still, she's trying not to intimidate or startle him. She  _knows_  she's bigger and stronger than probably most of the people on that ship, if not all of them. She  _knows_  everyone knows how good she is in a fight. If she's doing anything the way I did she's probably trying to be seen without being in the way, without putting anyone in a position where they've got to acknowledge just how afraid she's making them. She can't make them not-afraid of her. They've got to work that out on their own...because frankly we don't know how to help them."

"Wait," said Lance. "Seriously? Olia's crew were scared of you?" Lance clearly felt the need to wonder if he was going to be told the rebels were scared of gummy bears next.

"When they realized I'm part galra, yeah," said Keith. "This," and he put a hand on the Red Paladin's gauntlet he wore, "goes a long way to calming that down. I was on her ship as a Blade, the same as Elcris."

Allura seemed to be thinking the problem over. "I...think I understand," she mused. "She's big, and scary, and she can't make herself be small and friendly, but people don't become rebels because they're neutral about galra." She looked over to Pidge. "Next time you talk to Matt, would you call me? I may be able to help him, and if we can help him, he may be able to help Olia. Keith does have a point; for the coalition to truly succeed, the Blades must be accepted as truly equal partners."

Pidge nodded to Allura, and said, “Keith, maybe I should take Green to this ice world alone. I can keep a transport inside Green, and stay cloaked. I can definitely go through any of their coded logs faster than they probably can on their own, and if something goes wrong it’s better to field four lions than three.”

“Agreed,” said Keith. “But it’s also the only lead we’ve got, so...I’m not sure any of us have anything better to work on.”

“I’ve got making listening posts for the Blades to work on,” said Hunk. “That’ll take a bit.”

“And Lance and I will work on this problem of integrating the Blades with the rebel fleet,” said Allura.

“Just leaves _you_ , o glorious leader,” said Lance with bright, cheery sarcasm.

It had the desired effect. Keith looked ceilingward, and facepalmed. “Right,” he said. “I’ll go work with Black, then.”


	2. Hacking Holts

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Pidge and Matt go track down an ice world and its rebel listening station. Ramen is involved.

Pidge’s first stop was meeting Matt at one of the rebels’ junkyards. Ships weren’t easy to come by, and ships that could be taken into combat were even more of a challenge to acquire. Galra ships required galra tech or galra blood to operate, and subjugated worlds tended to be low on resources to produce their own fleets. Olkarion was a rarity, in that its citizens had worked out how to _grow_ most of their technology.

So the rebels took over junkyards – asteroids and planets where the empire and its myriad merchants would discard broken ... _everything_. And from the parts they cobbled together new ships, or melted them down to make whatever might be needed. The empire was not, on the whole, able to grasp the concept of recycling, and that was very much to the rebels’ gain.

Matt greeted his little sister with a happy hug, and a gesture that took in the mountains of junk. “We can fix just about anything here, if we get the time,” he said. “There’s people here making new ships from old parts pretty much constantly, and hiding the results until we get pilots.”

Pidge looked around. Green looked incredibly posh in this setting, but it could just be that it was a giant cat. Cats could look posh pretty much anywhere. “Where’s Olia?”

“Grumbling,” Matt admitted, his tone light. “She didn’t like Keith’s answer much. C’mon.” He led the way along a fairly narrow track between metal mountains.

Pidge trotted to keep up. “Is it really that big an issue? I mean I know people never seem to thank them when they lend us a hand, but-”

“It really is,” said Matt. “I think it just doesn’t get to us as much because we haven’t seen Galra cruisers devastating Earth, or Galra soldiers on our block.”

Pidge’s mouth closed. That was a disturbing image, she had to agree. She changed the subject. “Takashi said the ship was a small one, light cargo, surface-to-orbit. Something easy to hide?”

“Takashi, huh?” asked Matt. “You’ve gotta be kidding me with the twin brother thing, by the way. What’s really up?”

Pidge quickly gestured Matt to shut up, or at least be quieter. “Promise you don’t talk to anyone else about it. Except Elcris if you absolutely have to.”

Matt paused in navigating around a section of dismembered metal pipe. “A Blade knows but you’re not telling the fleet?” he asked, wary. “What kind of trouble are you in, Pidge?”

“It’s why we had to get Keith to Earth, and back to Black,” said Pidge quietly. “Shiro wasn’t Shiro. He was a clone.”

That froze Matt in his tracks, his mouth a little ‘o’ as he processed all the implications. “No _wonder_ ,” he breathed. “We’d lose most of the coalition.” He made a cross-my-heart gesture. “Not a word from me, little sister. Humans have twins all the time.” He thought about it. “ _You_ worked it out, didn’t you?”

Pidge grinned at that. “Ship,” she reminded him. “C’mon. Takashi – the clone – said he woke up on a cruiser near the ice world. It’s pretty clear with what we know now, that the empire knew rebels were in the area. We _need_ to get those communication logs. Takashi was the subject of the project, not a willing participant.”

“And the outpost needs its transport ship,” Matt nodded, getting his feet in gear again. “I get it. Bringing a relief transport and some food and news would probably make their week. Listening posts can get really dull.” He paused, then flipped subjects again. “So why can the Blades know?”

“Because they’re used to it, I think,” said Pidge, hopping some circuitboards. “I mean they’ve been at this for thousands of years. And they’re infiltrators. I mean, they can’t clone people to do it, but they know how valuable that kind of intel is. As far as they’re concerned it’s just a good thing the clone was identified and removed from sensitive intel.”

Matt just shook his head, bemused. “You lead a crazy level of interesting life sometimes,” he said. He pointed to a shadowed area between two metal mounds. “There’s our hangar.”

Pidge blinked at it. “How are we getting the transport _out_ of there?”

Matt grinned. “You have to let me have _some_ surprises for you,” he said. “Can’t let you have _all_ the fun.”

~*~

The hangar was truly cunningly made, out of bits of hull and decking welded together to create the appearance of Yet Another Mound while in reality being entirely hollow, with hinges to let quite a large section of the ‘mound’ open out into clear air to release completed ships. All the metal messed with any attempts at scanning, and inside were several ships of varying types being worked on. Repair, construction, and experimentation were all going on at once. Some of the rebels gave Matt a wave as he and Pidge walked by.

He led Pidge to a smallish ship, the space version of a minivan. “Think this will work?” he asked. “It doesn’t have much range, but it can probably get them around a single star system. There’s cargo room for supplies for two.”

Pidge shrugged. She only really had what Takashi had been able to tell her, after all. “Seems fine?” she said. “Let’s load it up with something better than ramen. It should fit into Green pretty easily. You coming with me to the base?”

“I think I’d better,” Matt nodded. “Two heads better than one for going through logs, and all. Or four better than two. I’ve had more time at a listening station, anyway.”

They set to work loading the ship up with fresh fruits and semi-perishables, the sort of things that wouldn’t keep forever but would probably keep long enough. For a pair of rebels stuck on food that was meant to last decades it would be a goodwill bribe difficult to resist. Then Matt took the controls while Pidge headed back to Green, opening the torso hatch to tuck the little ship inside.

Once Matt made his way up to Green’s cockpit, Pidge took off. “Where to?”

Matt checked his wrist computer, and entered some coordinates. “That’s where we need to go,” he said. “But it’s a fairly high traffic area, so better to cloak now.”

~*~

From the descriptions, Pidge had really been expecting some kind of free floating asteroid. This one had life forms, so she upgraded it to ‘small planet’. It was indeed just about entirely ice, which nagged at the back of her mind because what under the stars did those giant life forms _feed_ on?

“You know, I’ve always meant to ask someone if they ever found out how any part of this place is warm enough to evolve life,” mused Matt, and Pidge grinned. At another time she would have happily debated it with him, but they were here on business.

“Okay, so. How do we get to them?” she asked instead, flying low and cloaked over the ice. “There’s a cave, or something?”

“Yeah, though that won’t be big enough for the Lion,” said Matt. “You’re gonna have to drop me off. I think they’ll have to open their hangar.”

“Isn’t that a risk?” asked Pidge. “Should we wait for night?”

“Snow melts most often during the day,” Matt pointed out. “We’ll see, about the rest. If it were a problem I have no idea how they’d manage supplies.” He was watching their progress calculatingly. “Drop me off over there. Then go up and watch for movement, somewhere over _there_.” He pointed to a steep dropoff. “Bring the Lion in when you see it.”

“Roger that,” Pidge nodded, taking Green down low. Matt tugged up his hood, grabbed a jetpack, and headed to Green’s torso hatch. Pidge went as low as she dared, until Matt hopped out, then lifted back up to watch the snowy cliffs. It wasn’t a terribly long wait, but long enough to make Pidge wonder if Matt had had to do some explaining. A fairly large chunk of snow shivered and slid downward – not like a door might, but like an avalanche, revealing a dark cave big enough for Green to sit in.

She brought the Lion in.

~*~

“So he really _wasn’t_ a spy,” said Vakala, surprised. “Well. Guess that ended well then. The new ship’s nice. And the food. Was really getting sick of ramen.”

Remdax was handling most of the supply moving, hauling box after box off the replacement transport. “Either of you two maybe got my password?” he rumbled. “I keep forgetting.”

“How would _they_ know what your password is?” snapped Vakala, in the irritated tone of someone rehashing a very, _very_ old argument. “It’s _your password!”_

Matt rubbed the back of his neck, grinning sheepishly at his sister. “Guess we know why those logs weren’t analyzed,” he said. To Vakala, he added, “Maybe we can take a look. We’re pretty good with computers.”

“You did record the traffic, right?” asked Pidge. If Remdax couldn’t even log in, that wasn’t a great sign for him having done things that would require him being logged in.

“I did,” said Vakala. “And don’t mind him. He’ll remember his password again sooner or later, he always does. Of course, he’ll forget to write it down, and he’ll forget it again, but don’t worry too much. His station’s set to record every transmission by default. It’s just we can’t always get to them to analyze them. I mean, I’ve got to eat and sleep, you know.”

“Well...you’ve got help now,” said Matt brightly. “So, maybe let us take a look at those logs, around the time Shiro came here?”

Vakala rolled his eyes. “Well. Remdax had lost his password, _again_ , but sure, we kept a note. I mean it’s not like we get a lot of visitors here.” The short mustached alien led them to consoles that _looked_ horribly out of date, but were clean and clearly functional. “That one’s my station,” he said, pointing, “and that one’s Remdax’s. I’ll log into mine, save you that trouble at least.”

“I’ll get started there then,” said Matt, waiting for Vakala to do so, and then seating himself at the station. “...Whoa. Hey, Vakala, would you mind if I updated your software while I’m here? We can decode most of these now.”

“Really?” said Vakala, eyes glittering. “Sure. That’d really help pass the time.”

Pidge sat at Remdax’s station, and tugged out her tablet. She’d have to hack it, but she’d broken into far more secure systems than _this_ rig could ever hope to be. As promised, once inside it she found a constant recording of ...well, mostly static, since it was always on. So her first order of business was separating that out, then breaking the transmissions down into separate files. Since Remdax kept forgetting his password, she decided to write a little program too, while she was here, to make sure the machine would do this on its own henceforward. Just to save on storage space.

Then update the system with their code cracks, so that the transmissions could be understood.

Once she’d done that, she started searching the decoded files for anything to do with ‘Operation Kuron’, and was honestly surprised to find there _were_ results to capture.

Pidge startled badly when a hand touched her shoulder. “Pidge,” said Matt gently, “You’ve been at it for hours. Remdax made dinner. Stretch a little, okay?”

Pidge blinked at him. “Did you finish already?”

“No,” Matt admitted sheepishly. “Vakala startled me about five doboshes ago. But he’s right, we should eat.”

~*~

All in all it took two days to finish going through the logs and reconfigure the machines the two rebels were using. Matt and Pidge did everything they could to improve the quality of the outpost – making sure both stations were listening, refining automatic recordings (in the event of someone being logged out), and that both stations were equipped with the best decryption the two Holts had come up with so far. All while Vakala and Remdax made sure the new supplies were properly stored away – and then Matt and Pidge spent several hours walking them through how everything now worked. That they’d now _understand_ the messages they were intercepting seemed to be of most interest to them.

What was of interest to Matt and Pidge were several messages about Operation Kuron. Nothing of great import in and of themselves, but the messages included origination codes. If the lab really was based on a cruiser, they either now had its identification code or the code of a cruiser assigned to protect it. _That_ was something the Blade of Marmora could track down.

So Pidge and Matt were in good spirits as they bade Vakala and Remdax farewell, climbing into the Green Lion while Remdax cleared snow from the half-reburied cargo door. Maintaining cloak, Pidge respected the base’s cover and didn’t call the castleship until they were well away.

Coran’s voice was relieved and worried when she did. _“Pidge. So good to hear you’re all right. I know, I know, deep cover, but it’s very worrying when we can’t get a call from you. You need to get back here right away.”_

Pidge looked at Matt, who shrugged. “Honestly, Olia will be fine if I’m a few more days,” he said. “He sounds worried. And I can always call Olia from the castle.”

“Your call,” said Pidge, and sent to Coran, “On my way.”


	3. Dark Stars

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It is entirely possible that the highlight of this entire story was getting to write the line, "Oh my god, it's full of Shiros".
> 
> To the Lance lovers out there, I ask that you not worry too much about the developments in this chapter. I have my reasons, and none of them involve stealing Lance's thunder. Please do not murder me.

Black wasn’t quite the prison it’d been the last time Keith had had to fly it, but the relationship felt uneasy.

Part of that, Keith knew now, was the Lion didn’t have _one_ paladin, it had _many_. And it wasn’t, therefore, all that fond of any of them.

Part of it, Keith also suspected, was that he himself was the inadvertent architect of this problem. If he’d stayed, as Shiro had wanted him to, if he’d _led_ – or at least, gotten the others to _follow_ – if he’d _stayed_ – then there would not now be this ...wide open astral door. There would have been only one Black Paladin and …

Keith leaned against Black’s giant paw, closing his eyes. _No, there wouldn’t have_. He wasn’t sure Black understood it, but Keith did. Takashi had radiated ‘irritated Shiro’. He _couldn’t_ stand by and let someone else do a job he knew he could do better. That wasn’t just clone programming. Keith knew Shiro, the real Shiro, better than anyone on the ship. That perfectionist drive was what had gotten Shiro assigned to the Kerberos mission in the first place. He _knew_ he was the best for the job. He knew because he’d fought for it, trained for it, and by damn wasn’t going to put the Holts’ lives in anyone else’s hands. Once Takashi had been well enough to join the group, it was inevitable he’d want to lead it. That he wouldn’t be able to handle anyone else, not even Keith, in the job. He might have thought he could mentor, but...not from the back seat. It just wasn’t in him. Shiro led from the front. He’d always led from the front. Who flew Black was immaterial to that. And once Takashi was in Black, the problem of the extra paladin still needed solving.

It hadn’t been a wrong decision to back off and let ‘Shiro’ take command. The results bore that out. Takashi might be only a copy of Shiro, but no one could argue with ‘a third of the universe freed from galra control’. That wasn’t something Keith could have done, and he knew it. And of the remaining paladins, Keith had been the only one with an option that would keep him in the fight in another role. Stepping aside had been the right call.

 _Then_.

It had unforeseen consequences, but choices always did. Kolivan had been a good teacher, and Keith knew better than to spend too much time second guessing anymore. Solve one problem, welcome to three new ones. That was life. He patted Black’s claw and climbed up into the Lion. Settled into the seat. Around him, the consoles flickered to life.

Deep breath.

“I’m here,” said Keith. “Show me.”

~*~

The world was black, and purple mist. Keith looked down at himself and saw himself made of light, a glowing ghost of himself. He was in his Marmora armor, which was _not_ what he knew his body was actually wearing. He supposed it made sense though; he’d worn the Marmora armor a lot more often lately, and it was how he was used to seeing himself.

He heard a low growl, and turned. The Black Lion was here, too, huge and majestic and very, very bright. Its back blades had “..feathers?” Keith murmured aloud. He’d only ever seen the back blades look like that once. The fight with Zarkon, when Shiro took back the black bayard.

On impulse Keith reached in thought for the bayard – which he should _have_ , since his real body was wearing the paladin armor – and it appeared in his hand. He blinked as it took the form of “a _pistol_?” He squinted up at the Lion. “You do know I’m a lousy shot, right?”

But he did also have his Marmora blade. So _possibly_ it wouldn’t be too embarrassing, although he made a promise to himself to spend some significant time training with it. The last thing he needed was to give Lance new ammunition, pun very much intended.

On the other hand, maybe he didn’t need more than the Lion was providing. There didn’t seem to be any enemies. Or...much of anything. It didn’t matter if you were a lousy shot if there was nothing that needed shooting at. Keith let the bayard go, watched it vanish. Looked back up at Black. “Okay,” he said. “What next?”

The stars...swirled. Keith stumbled, briefly dizzy.

_Oh my god it’s full of Shiros._

Keith backed _right_ up against the bright form of the Lion. This was beyond bad. This was …

This was taking the one he’d always fought hardest for, cared for most, and turning him into some kind of carnival horror show. _Obscene_. The word he wanted was _obscene_.

Above him, the Lion growled quietly. Agreeing, Keith thought. Their regard for Shiro was something they had in common.

There were a lot of Shiros here.

A _lot_ of Shiros.

Each oblivious to all the others, and most in states of catatonia or imprisonment, bound to tables or caught in tubes. Some had two arms, some had one, some had one-real-one-synthetic. Some had the now-familiar facial scar across the nose. Some didn’t. Some were awake, some frowned in dark dreams. A few were screaming – in rage, in madness, in terror - and the sounds made Keith’s skin crawl because there was nothing in those screams to tell him _his_ Shiro wasn’t making them.

They all had faint silver lines connecting them to the Black Lion. Faint, most of them. Nearly invisible where the ‘Shiro’ had two flesh arms and a lack of scars. But there were ties there, or potential ties. Black could sense them all.

They weren’t seeing or reacting to Keith which was, in Keith’s estimation, Black being very kind. Or possibly remembering that the ‘dream’ had ended with Keith waking up. Black was shielding him this time. Showing him what was here without exposing him.

“Is...the real Shiro here?” Keith asked of Black, not sure he wanted to know, but sure he needed to.

Black growled again, head bowing slightly.

Keith frowned. That wasn’t much of an answer. He looked away...and saw something at his feet. There wasn’t a ‘ground’ to speak of. That is, clearly there was a flat plane on which all this vision stuff rested – himself, the Lion, all the many Shiros – but if he put his hand down to his feet, he could feel nothing. Yet if he walked, his feet seemed quite certain there was something to walk _on_.

Mystic realms, Keith could already see, were going to be a pain in the ass.

Where the ‘floor’ ought to be and really wasn’t, among the blackness and stars and purple mist, there was a second set of threads. Where the threads that bound the many Shiros to Black were silvery – albeit quite faint in several cases – this second set were almost invisible, black and darkest purple, a virus rolled out like dough.

It connected all the Shiros to...something. Something else. Something unseen, distant.

Keith looked up at Black. “You still want me to try using a pistol?” he asked it.

The Black Lion’s yellow eyes flashed, dimmed.

Keith took that to mean _get the hell on with it_.

As there really wasn’t another option, Keith set off along the faint purple-black trail, careful to avoid the shimmering forms of the many Shiros. He remembered the dream very well still, and the last thing he wanted was a head full of all these not-Shiros screaming at him. Again.

Once past them, the many threads started converging, making them easier to follow. They all went to one place, that much was clear. Habit had Keith drop into a sort of hunting crouch, draw his Marmora blade. In theory, the real Shiro was at the other end of this trail, but he didn’t like the colors. They felt...wrong. He didn’t summon the bayard pistol. Aiming at something but not hitting it tended only to be a good idea if the goal was to piss the target off.

The silver crowd of clones faded away behind him. So did the Black Lion. There was just himself, and the thickening purple-black cord, and the void.

And then there wasn’t.

Keith barely ducked as something very large and very angry swung something very heavy at where his skull should have been. He dropped into a roll, awoke his blade, swung hard at the knee as he dodged. Beneath his feet was no void but bloodstained sands, the silence replaced by a roaring crowd. He hopped back from his attacker, trying to figure out what the _hell_ was going on.

He got quite an excellent view of Shiro, with two human arms and a very large rock, slamming said rock down onto the head of Keith’s attacker, which turned out to be a quite large galra with metal and probably cybernetic implants fused to one side of its skull. The other side didn’t stand a chance against the rock.

Keith’s first instinct – to go to Shiro’s side, stand with him, fight whatever the hell came next – was tempered by Marmora training. Shiro’s eyes weren’t looking anywhere sane. There was no recognition there, only that particular insanity that came when you’d been fighting for your life so long you’d forgotten why, but you were bound and determined to keep at it.

Around them the arena roared: _Champion. Champion._

Keith let his blade sleep again, sheathing it at his back. He didn’t want to fight Shiro. This...had to be a memory, didn’t it? Shiro had mentioned being made to fight in the arena, although he’d never given much detail. Galra attendants came forward to drag the body of the defeated foe away, but Shiro didn’t seem to see them. The way he was standing, breathing, told Keith the man’s entire focus was on not falling over. Not looking injured, not looking _weak_.

Galra had no mercy for weakness.

A second gate opened. Shiro walked with leaden feet toward it, clearly only marginally aware of his surroundings. Keith looked around, noted that the arena sands were empty, that the chanting was steady, and followed him.

Now they stood in what passed for a Galra operating theater. Sharp bonesaws on manipulable arms, gurneys with restraints, quintessence in tanks. Shiro was on the gurney, very much restrained. Very much aware, too. He was fighting to get free as galra scientists entered the room.

 _Fuck this_ , was more of a state of mind than an actual thought, as Keith moved to set Shiro loose. It didn’t work; his hands went right through the restraints. No one saw him, no one reacted to him. This was Shiro’s memory, and Keith hadn’t been there when the memory was made.

He wasn’t all that happy to be there _now_ , if he was being honest. The moment he recognized that one of the scientists was Ulaz, he had a sick feeling he knew which memory this was going to be.

Shiro was a test subject. The pain of test subjects was something to be written down, data for the record. Ulaz never ordered anesthesia. That might make him look weak, sympathetic to the plight of lesser beings. Part of Keith, the part that had spent long enough in the Blade to know exactly why Ulaz was doing what he was doing, understood.

The rest spent a while memorizing the face of every galra in the room because when the saws started spinning, and Shiro’s screams of pain echoed around the room over and over, Keith was damn sure _these galra in particular_ were going to die a very thorough death. He watched as they made sure Shiro didn’t bleed out, as they took the severed arm and placed it in a suspension capsule. Bit down hard on nausea, thankful Shiro had _finally_ passed out, as the new arm was attached. The scene became blurry, dimmed to blackness as Shiro’s memory stopped, as it were, recording.

“...I’m sorry you had to see that,” said a heartbreakingly familiar voice, and Keith launched himself at it. Hugged hard at the black paladin armor, relieved as hell to be hugged back. “It doesn’t bother me as much as it used to, I promise.”

 _This_ was real. Something about the presence was _real_ , genuine, and he’d been hugged by Takashi just ...probably-hours before so it wasn’t hard to feel the difference. This was really Shiro.

“It’s always you that winds up finding me, isn’t it Keith?” said Shiro ruefully. “You know, one of these years I’m going to manage an _entire year_ without you having to rescue me.”

“Like you don’t save me just as often,” Keith managed, running his arm across his eyes because now was really not the time to get _that_ emotional. There ware far too many problems to solve yet. “You just never keep track of that.” He stood back, taking it in, and realized there were more problems here than he’d initially thought. “You’re...not glowing.”

Shiro blinked. “We need to have a talk about your communication skills sometime,” he said. “Hello would’ve been nice.”

“I mean it,” said Keith, frowning now. He looked at his hand – still rather ethereal – and held it up before Shiro. “Look at me, and then look at you.”

Shiro’s smile faded, as he did as bidden. The difference between them wasn’t at all hard to see. Keith’s form was shimmery, faintly translucent. Shiro’s form was solid, unlit (save where his armor glowed) and opaque. “...All right, that’s new.”

“You weren’t this way before now?” asked Keith.

“No, I mean new information,” said Shiro, still studying the differences. “I mean it’s just been me, and the memory loops, aside from the one time you sort of nightmared through here. Not that I wasn’t glad to see you.”

“Nightmared -?” Keith echoed, and stopped. The dream. Of course. One of those voices shouting at him probably had been the real one. “So...you saw that.”

Shiro waved a hand at the relatively featureless world around them. “Still the best thing on broadcast,” he pointed out.

Keith facepalmed, realizing it had been Takashi behind that galaxywide promotional...carnival and Shiro probably didn’t know anything about it. Keith had caught a few of the broadcasts between assignments, and had quickly gone from fury that the team was flat out lying to everyone and sundry about his involvement – which had caused some amusement among the Blades – to a deep pity for Allura, who not only had to be involved, but had to pretend to be someone she really wasn’t in the bargain.

“What?” asked Shiro.

“What’s the last thing you remember?” asked Keith, carefully.

“Fighting Zarkon,” said Shiro simply. “The blazing sword.”

“And then...here?” guessed Keith.

Shiro nodded, worried now. “What is it? How long?” He paused. “And...why are you wearing Marmora armor?”

Oh yes. And that, too.

“This isn’t ‘a long story’ so much as it’s a lot of very long stories,” said Keith slowly. “And I’m not sure any of them are going to get us closer to getting you _out_ of here.” He looked down. At Shiro’s feet, the black-and-purple road ended. “And...there’s that.”

Shiro looked down. “The ground?”

Of course, Shiro wouldn’t be able to tell. It went where he went. And _here_ it was one solid piece, not a bunch of threads. “Never mind,” Keith opted. He wasn’t sure _what_ it was, yet. Nothing good, but what it was really doing was anyone’s guess right now.

He was holding Shiro’s hand, and didn’t want to let go. No wonder he’d combed the starfields and found nothing. Reality was so much stranger than he would ever have guessed. Shiro, too, seemed glad to have someone there. Of course, he’d been trapped in his own darker memories on a loop for this entire time, so probably anyone would’ve been a welcome distraction. Even Haggar turning up would at least have given him a target.

“For now,” said Shiro. “But I want to know _everything_ that’s happened. And why you’re in Marmora armor. Who’s leading the team?”

Keith opened his mouth to _try_ to assemble some kind of answer. But at that moment a kind of ...tsunami of blackness came rushing in from all directions, tearing the two of them apart, sending Keith spinning and rolling into the astral darkness.

Out of breath, and very disoriented, he opened his eyes to find himself back in the cockpit. Back in his paladin armor. He staggered to his feet, and quickly fell over.

Flat on his back, he looked up at some of Black’s internal displays and waited for his eyes to focus. “...You don’t pull any punches, do you?” he asked woozily.

“ _Keith,”_ came Coran’s voice over the comm. _“Keith, we’ve got a call from Kolivan. I – you need to get up to the bridge.”_

“On my way,” said Keith, with rather more assurance than he actually felt at that point. The bridge was a hell of a long way away when ‘getting out of the Lion’ was looking like such a challenge.


	4. Random Diplomacy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A brief interlude of defining some of the problems. Before new and bigger problems turn up.

Hunk decided to drag Lance and Allura into his workshop for their chatting, since he liked having people around while he worked and honestly wanted to hear what they came up with. There were chairs, and there were a lot of random parts. Pidge _thought_ problems out. Hunk mostly thought with his hands, learning alien technology by actively and repeatedly fiddling with it, until something either started working or caught fire.

There were several fire extinguishers around the room, and Hunk’s idea of ‘get comfortable’ was to pleasantly point out their locations and how they worked, since he’d modified them a bit. It did at least give Allura and Lance identical “you’re really not helping” expressions for a few moments.

“...I’m going to begin by telling you two that I am not entirely sure this problem _has_ a solution,” Allura began, looking down at her hands. “The galra have been destroying worlds, races, and civilizations for ten thousand years. There are entire swathes of the known _universe_ which are now uninhabitable because of the Galra empire. Countless more worlds where the people have known nothing but abuse and slavery. And if the Blade of Marmora has done anything, anything at all to so much as slow that down...no one’s heard about it.”

“I remember,” said Lance slowly. “When Kolivan offered the Blades to lead the coalition, after we lost Shiro. The others really didn’t like that.”

Hunk started gathering parts, setting them out on his work table. “Probably just as well Keith blew up at them,” he said, a bit sadly.

“No,” said Allura. “It didn’t change anything, in the end. Voltron is still the uniting symbol. If we lose Voltron, the coalition will splinter.” She pursed her lips. “Do...you think I should suggest Keith possibly not attend meetings like those? He seems much quieter these days, but ...”

“But some of those people make _all_ of us want to throw things,” Lance finished, leaning back in his chair. “Like that guy who wanted to know why there weren’t five of us when it only took four to free his whole planet. Like he wanted to tell us to go back and do it over because it wasn’t _awesome_ enough or something.”

Allura smiled a little smile. “Yes, exactly,” she said. “I’m glad he’s trying, but...he doesn’t have to do everything, and I don’t think he _wants_ to.”

Lance nodded. “Sure. Bring it up, I think he’d be relieved. But we’re getting off topic. There’s got to be _something_ we can do to help at least the Blades be okay by people.”

“You ever notice they’re mostly just not very nice people?” asked Hunk, raising a part to the light to examine it. “I mean they’re not all _mean_. But I don’t think I’ve ever met one good at _nice_. Even Keith’s not _nice_. I can’t imagine a galra, you know, bringing a fruit basket if you get sick, or anything.”

“They’re...kinda more ‘bring you the severed head of the guy that annoyed you’,” Lance agreed. “Which sometimes works and more times doesn’t.” He looked at Allura. “Would it help if we taught them basic nice? The Blades, I mean. Is that something galra do?”

Allura blinked, opened her mouth, closed it. The idea seemed to surprise and baffle her. “You know...I have no idea? They know honor, and courtesy – or they did once, at least. And they can be quite thoughtful and kind. But...you may be right, Hunk, I don’t think I have ever heard anyone describe a galra as ‘nice’.”

“Thoughtful and kind?” Lance repeated. “Who did that?”

“Zarkon, actually,” said Allura. “In the early days. My father told me stories. He was honorable and courteous, and when he met Honerva, very thoughtful and kind. My father thought it was adorable, because he was never very good at expressing his feelings with words. But he would have ...” her smile faded. “fought the whole universe for her.” She shook her head, sadly. “Galra don’t ...talk about their feelings. They find ways to show it. The Blades probably feel that the work they do and the risks they take are adequate proof that they do care about the fate of other worlds, other races.”

For several minutes, the only sound was Hunk quietly putting parts together, assembling beacons. Lance was absorbing the image of a Zarkon being a kind of bumbling proto-romantic. It didn’t mesh well with the scars the universe now bore.

“So...” said Lance at last, slowly, “we’re probably not going to get any further teaching Blades to be nice than I got teaching Keith the Voltron chant.”

“Probably not,” said Allura gently. “Kolivan seems to have had a very...galra idea in putting a Blade on a rebel ship. They do best when they’re allowed to _show_ their feelings, their intent.”

“Except it’s really not working,” Lance pointed out. “It’s just making people upset and afraid.”

“Well yeah,” interjected Hunk from the workbench. “They aren’t asking the Blades to do anything, or telling them anything that they can help with. So they’re stuck trying to not scare people, and that’s not working. You heard Keith. Sitting in a common room trying not to be the biggest, scariest person there? Or in his case just scariest. When did _that_ ever make friends?”

“So...if we can’t change the galra, change the rebels?” asked Allura.

“It sounds like something we might actually manage to do,” Lance pointed out. “All kinds of races join the rebellion.”

Hunk set a finished beacon against the wall, and began work on another. “Give the Blades these beacons,” he said. “Let ‘em go with the rebel ships to place them. Stop being their gobetweens. Let the Blades interact directly with the rebel captains. And _we_ make sure the captains know that the Blades are more effective the more they know. We’ve relied on the Blades for intel since we first met Kolivan. It’s always been solid. We couldn’t have fought Zarkon that first time at all, if the Blades hadn’t helped us. Maybe if the captains see what kind of work they do they’ll understand just how much they’re helping and give them a break.”

“That’s...quite a jump,” Allura noted. “We apparently can’t even get Captain Olia to accept Elcris.”

“Yeah, we should probably start with getting that sorted,” Lance agreed. “Olia’s word goes a long way in the fleet. Farther than Matt’s even. If we can get her on board, she can probably talk other captains into trying out the idea.”

Hunk only rumbled somewhat unhappily at that, making rather more noise in his beacon-making than was strictly required. He was still a bit sour on Olia for her view of Keith, who he first and foremost viewed as One Of Us. Hunk did not approve of people who were not kind to One Of Us.

“So...Matt, possibly?” asked Allura brightly, letting Hunk get his rumbling out of his system. “He seems persuasive.”

“I dunno,” Lance mused. “Maybe not this time. He’s human. Earth hasn’t exactly been oppressed by the empire. He could go to bat for Keith because Keith looks human, but Elcris doesn’t.”

“I’m not sure we have a better option,” Allura pointed out. “Matt is at least willing to try.”

All at once the sound of the Black Lion roaring reverberated through the castleship, causing all three to look toward the door.

“...Anybody else kinda ...less than cool with how _vocal_ Black’s been since Keith got here?” asked Hunk, a bit too casually.

Allura frowned. “Didn’t Keith say he was going to work with Black?” she asked.

“Yeah,” Lance agreed, getting up. “Maybe something’s gone wrong. I mean Red used to have to run to his rescue all the time, maybe Black just wants to save itself the trip.”

Allura got up too. “So you’re going to go see what it wants?” she asked. “I’ll go with you.”

“ _Paladins,_ ” came Coran’s voice. _“Are any of you in range?”_

“Here, Coran,” said Allura.

“Yeah, we’re here. I mean, I am, and Hunk is,” said Lance.

“Thanks man, but I can answer my own phone, honest,” said Hunk. “What’s up, Coran?”

“ _Priority call from Kolivan,”_ said Coran. _“Haven’t gotten an answer from Keith yet.”_

“Oh, we’re just on our way down to Black’s bay,” said Lance. “Did you hear that roar?”

“ _Yes, and it’s probably not a good sign,”_ said Coran worriedly. There was a pause of a few ticks, and, _“Oh. There he is. Got an answer from Keith, he’s on his way to the bridge. You should probably come too, right? We’re doing that again?”_

“Yes, Coran,” said Allura, smiling. “We’re all on our way.”

“I’m still going to swing by Black’s bay first,” said Lance. “Hunk’s right, Black being so chatty is probably not a great sign. I just want to make sure everything’s fine.”

Hunk set down the beacon he was working on. “Sounds good,” he said, heading for the door. “We’ll see you on the bridge.”


	5. Four Lions, Two Days

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The longest single chapter I've done in ages, and it can be summed quite simply:
> 
> Let's try "Postmortem" without Kuron, without Pidge, and without Voltron!
> 
> (This has been an advertisement for Excedrin: Migraine.)

Lance found Keith using a corridor wall as a walking support, not very far from Black’s hangar. Wide-eyed and pale, if there had been anything on board that qualified as ‘drugs’ (that the paladins actually _knew_ about) Lance might have asked what he was on, because ‘bad trip’ looked like a perfect description.

But there wasn’t, and there was only one thing Keith had said he was doing, so Lance opened with a somewhat more worried, “Black didn’t ...change its mind, or anything, did it?”

Keith shook his head, hair falling across his eyes. “Something upset it, I think,” he said, a bit more faintly than his usual tone. “Not us. Something else.”

Lance blinked, and tugged Keith’s free arm across his shoulders to support him, since his legs didn’t seem quite up to the job. “You do _not_ look good. And ‘us’ who?”

Keith gave Lance a sort of blearily wary look at this sudden onslaught of unsolicited aid, but didn’t argue with it. “Just need some water, I think,” he said.

Lance rolled his eyes, but didn’t let Keith go. They’d both agreed to get to the bridge, after all, and that would go faster in tandem. “Sure. But ‘us’ _who_?”

“I think I found Shiro,” said Keith. “And then something upset Black.”

Lance stopped. “Wait. _What_?” he demanded. “Where? _How?_ And why isn’t he with you then?”

Keith was still having trouble focusing properly, but on the plus side Lance was both a large target and very close by. He got both hands firmly around Lance’s head without any trouble, looking Lance squarely in the face if not quite eye to eye. “Lance,” he growled with tightly gripped patience. “One thing at a time. Water. Bridge. Kolivan. _Then_ details. I promise. _Focus._ ”

Lance blinked. This was new. “Uh. Right,” he said, and Keith let go of his skull. Lance half expected Keith to shove him away and try to make his way on his own, but while Keith wasn’t pulling away, his posture did shift such that if Lance chose to head off Keith wouldn’t wind up on the floor. That...kind of stung, but it stung in a ‘well, that’s typical’ sort of way so Lance let it go for now. Water had been requested, and that wasn’t hard to get. He steered them to one of the smaller refreshment areas, snagged a water packet, passed it over.

Keith poked the straw in and drank most of it fairly quickly, blinking furiously as he let Lance handle navigation. It did seem to help, and soon enough he was walking on his own again, normal as anything. “Thanks.”

“I’m holding you to that promise,” Lance warned.

By the time they got to the bridge, Allura and Hunk were waiting and Coran looked a bit worried. It faded as he saw Lance and Keith enter. “Oh good,” he said. “I didn’t think Black’s hangar was _that_ far. Kolivan says he has urgent news.”

Keith nodded. “Then it probably is.” He headed to the comm, activating the screen. “We’re here, Kolivan.”

The old Blade’s face appeared, solemn and dour as ever, before them. He looked around the room, frowned a bit more deeply at Pidge’s absence. “Where is the Green?”

“On assignment,” said Keith. “Communication blackout. We’ll fill her in as soon as we can.”

That, at least, Kolivan understood well. He nodded. “Zarkon has been slain,” he said.

Had there been crickets in the castleship, they could have chirped a symphony in the silence that greeted this news.

Keith glanced over at Lance, wondering if anyone else thought that might be what Black had reacted to. It had severed the link, but...Zarkon _was_ its first paladin. The Lions had opinions, feelings, albeit of a peculiar kind.

Lance’s jaw dropped. “How did _that_ happen?”

“Lotor, from reports,” said Kolivan calmly. “Official Imperial reports, in this case. Lotor has sent the news across all official channels. According to his claim, he led Zarkon into a trap not unlike the one he used against you on Thayserix.”

“Are the reports true?” asked Allura faintly. “Did he really do this?”

“He left Zarkon’s body in the remains of his cruiser,” said Kolivan. “I have sent agents. It is confirmed. Zarkon is slain.”

“So...Lotor’s Emperor again?” asked Hunk.

Kolivan looked down. “Not precisely. The next Emperor will be chosen by the generals at the Kral Zera, in two days’ time. You will want to be on guard, paladins. This will be a time of great upheaval. The most ambitious generals will want to strengthen their position with great feats. Those feats will be disasters for many worlds still part of the Empire. And any worlds deemed valuable enemy targets.”

“So everyone needs to be on high alert,” said Keith, studying Kolivan closely. “What’s the Kral Zera?”

“A gathering,” said Kolivan shortly. “And the topic of least importance. Word must spread through the coalition that an attack may come at any time, from any direction, and those near enough _must_ go to the aid of those attacked. You will not be able to counter this many strikes yourselves. The Empire is, for the present, only an idea. The reality is a hundred fiefdoms, a hundred fragments that each wish to become the heart of the Empire to be.”

Thoughts of all the attacks they wouldn’t be able to stop simply because Voltron was just one robot turned the whole room solemn. Eventually, Keith said, “Kolivan, make sure Elcris is the one to warn the rebel fleet. We’ll take care of everyone else the best we can.”

Kolivan nodded, and the screen blinked out. Allura said, “Why?”

“Because if she isn’t the one to warn them,” said Keith, “she may have to find her own way back to base. This isn’t news Olia’s going to take well. She needs to tell them before we do, so they know she _can_ warn them.”

“...Never would’ve thought Lotor had it in him to kill Zarkon,” said Lance quietly. “That had to take planning.”

“I’m sure we’ll hear from him,” said Allura quietly. “If he’s still around in two days.”

Keith made a face. A gathering of the most ambitious Galra generals? He had a few ideas where Kolivan’s mind was. The Blade of Marmora’s goal was the destruction of the Empire – it was too good an opportunity to miss, really. But he was happier to be where he was now, on the whole. Better to fight to protect what could be protected.

Lance pointedly nudged him on the arm. “Hey. Promise time,” he said.

Keith nodded. “Um. I think I know where Shiro is,” he said, and the room dropped to absolute silence again. “But there are problems.”

“That wasn’t what you said before,” said Lance. “You said you _found_ him.”

“Really?” said Hunk. “Perfect timing! Let’s go get him then.”

“I truly didn’t think we’d find him this quickly,” said Allura, smiling. “But that really is excellent news.”

“No, it’s _not_ ,” said Keith flatly. “I found him _in the astral plane_. With Black. I think he’s _really_ in the astral plane. Not a projection or something like that. I think that’s where _all_ of him is.”

“Oh,” said Allura softly, and the sad sound seemed to sum up everyone’s reaction.

“But...he’s there,” said Lance. “You talked to him? He’s okay?”

Keith gave him a baleful look. “Define _okay_ for this situation. He didn’t look injured. Or crazy. Does that cover it?”

“Does he know what’s been happening?” asked Hunk. “Like maybe the memory weirdness goes both ways?”

“No,” said Keith. “I didn’t get a chance to tell him much. And there’s more problems. The clones are interfering somehow. I don’t think Black can help Shiro while they’re around.”

“The Black Lion controls the astral plane,” said Allura slowly. “How can it _not help_?”

“Haggar,” said Keith. “Or her druids. There’s two things in the way and...I don’t understand either of them. The clones are in the way like...shrubs or something, sort of...blocking Black’s access to him. And there’s some kind of magic involved too. The dark stuff, like the druids use. I think Black teleported Shiro there to help him, or hide him, but I don’t think it can get him out while all the other stuff is there.”

“Can _we_ go there?” asked Lance. “I mean we’d totally take turns visiting at least...”

“Do I _look_ like an expert on the Black Lion?” snapped Keith, irritated. “The closest thing to an expert to exist apparently just _died_. I have no idea how _any_ of this works. You want to visit, go ask Black. And be prepared for interesting dreams if it decides to answer you.”

“I will, thanks,” said Hunk, “But not right now. Everywhere’s in danger and we’re short a lion.”

“True,” said Allura. “We can’t reach Pidge right now at all. We’ll have a lot of trouble as it is.”

“Do we care who wins?” asked Hunk. “I mean...is there a good option?”

“Not that I know of,” shrugged Keith. “I haven’t heard of a single general we’d actually be happy to see running the empire. They’re all bad news, just different flavors.”

“Lotor hasn’t _attacked_ us, at least,” mused Allura. “At least, not all that much...”

“Different I’ll agree to,” said Keith. “Better I won’t. That’s for him to prove on his own, if he lives to.”

That seemed to be the general consensus. There wasn’t really a reason for them to try to involve themselves, not in imperial politics, and not when there were innocent worlds on the line.

“Okay, for now – sleep in shifts,” said Keith. “We’re going to get lots of calls, it’s probably best if we’re not all equally exhausted when they come. We’ll do the best we can until Pidge gets back. Allura, you’re first watch. Spread the word as far as you can, but call Olia’s ship last. Coran, the tick you hear from Pidge get her back here.”

Lance looked skyward, laughing quietly. “Keith? _We’ve_ done this before. Like, this exact thing even. For weeks at a go, remember? Doing it for just two days is a _cakewalk_.” He made a shooing motion. “Nice try though.”

Hunk just laughed. “I’m fine for a nap. That’s not a bad idea. Back when the goo hits the circulators,” he said, and headed off with a stretching of arms. Lance followed him, still laughing.

Allura turned to the screens. “It seems I’ve calls to make,” she said. “Don’t take it personally. It’s going to take us all a while to adjust.”

Keith shook his head, though the blush he couldn’t hide showed Lance had gotten to him a bit. “If the worst thing that happens while I’m doing this is Lance makes fun of me, it’ll easily be the best job I’ve ever done,” he said. “Thanks, for handling the calls.”

Allura gave him an odd look at that. “You _have_ changed,” she said, and it was difficult to tell from her tone whether she approved. “But you should take your own advice and sleep.”

Keith just nodded, and headed off. Behind him, he could hear Allura starting down the long list of people who needed to be warned.

~*~

The first call came only a few hours later. Ryner was visibly upset to report Olkarion under attack. Coran relayed everything as the paladins got to their lions.

Lance was the first to ask, “Wait, isn’t Takashi still there?”

“We haven’t heard from him,” said Ryner carefully. “When Allura sent word to expect trouble, he went to check on our defenses. We haven’t finished bringing them online, and they’re being overwhelmed.”

“We’ll find him,” said Keith. “We’re on our way.”

Four lions wasn’t the best way to begin a massive defense effort. As they descended toward Olkarion, Keith said, “Stay high. Whatever’s going on, we don’t want to get caught in it. See if you can scan for Takashi.”

“He’ll be somewhere near the ion cannon,” said Lance, with certainty. “That’s the biggest defense the city was working on – oh, boy.” They were near enough to see now, all the purpled vines, overgrowing everything like a thousand years happening in moments. “That’s not good.”

“Find the source, Lance,” said Keith. “If you can hurt it or clear anything on the way, great.”

“On it,” said Lance, and Red darted off over the forest.

Keith paused, and found to his surprise the others were waiting for him to give orders. That was a surprise. “Hunk, get a solution with the Olkari,” he said. “This looks like their work and nobody else is going to understand their explanations. Get us a way to reverse this. Allura, give me a hand digging Takashi out, and we’ll see if we can’t get the city’s defenses up.”

“Got it,” said Hunk, and Yellow flew off in almost the opposite direction from Red.

Allura simply said, “Of course,” and tested Blue’s sonic cannon on the vines, trying to see a way through them. “I think I may have found him.”

“Stay ranged,” said Keith.

“Absolutely,” said Allura. “I’ll see if we can freeze this growth.” The ice beam did have a useful effect, but the area of it was rather small compared to the amount of devastation being wrought. Keith did what he could with Black’s cannons, but they weren’t as effective as the ice beam and he didn’t dare drop down to try claws and fangs, or jawblades.

“ _Guys, I think I found the source,”_ came Lance’s voice, worried. _“It looks like a big tree robeast thing and it’s got a big cannon.”_

“ _I’ve found Ryner,”_ came Hunk’s voice. _“They’re filling me in. I parked Yellow on the roof, but it’s only a matter of time before the vines get it if we aren’t quick.”_

Keith’s hands flexed on the control grips. Focus wasn’t the hard part right now, but patience? Definitely patience was hard. They needed Pidge. Or Matt. Except _both_ of them were incommunicado and halfway across the galaxy going through old logs. In the absence of a screwdriver, some bent coathanger was going to have to be made to serve.

“Lance, do what you can and call for help if you need it. Hunk, _work fast_. Allura, get that ice beam ready to break me out if this goes badly.”

He cut the comm, said, “Not a _word_ , Shiro,” for only Black to hear, and dove Black at the tangle of vines where Takashi’s ship was bound.

~*~

Lance was, if he were being strictly honest with himself, having the most terrifyingly awesome time of his life. This kind of bob-and-weave dogfighting was what the Red Lion was best at, what it was made for, and it didn’t hurt that its flame attacks withered the vines pretty consistently.

The plant robeast had a pretty fearsome cannon. But it couldn’t fire it _and_ send the really long vines at him, and Red was _fast_. Lance occupied its attention and did what he could to keep it from advancing on the city, burning strips clear wherever it looked like it might help. From up high it wasn’t hard to see the infection spreading, purple-black against brown and green. Firepower alone wasn’t going to get this one done.

~*~

Hunk did _not_ like being out of his Lion when there was a robeast around, but...Keith was right, without Pidge around there wasn’t anyone else that was likely to understand what the Olkari were even talking about. Which, if _he_ were understanding it correctly, was some kind of refined virus. He wasn’t Pidge, he didn’t really need to flip the definitions of ‘virus’ around to get this. It was a virus, it was overwriting the normal codes of the forest and making the _thing_. Right. And the Olkari were flipping out because the code was just different enough that they couldn’t put on their coronets and _stop_ it.

Hunk was listening with half an ear, a habit picked up after so long working around Pidge’s mile-a-minute stream of consciousness babbles, while he looked over such data as the Olkari had managed to gather before the vines wiped out enough of their systems. “So...these coronet things, they still work, right?”

“Yes, but we can’t interface with the vines,” said Ryner, a bit overly patiently. “We can’t stop them.”

“So don’t,” said Hunk, holding up some of Ryner’s own notes – but notes she’d made about Takashi. “Do this. Can you do this?”

Ryner blinked. Took the tablet from Hunk, looked it over. “...To what end?”

“Well, for one thing, getting the power back on would be nice,” said Hunk. “The vines can be redirected to encircle the city instead of overrunning it. Maybe turn them back on whatever’s causing this.”

Ryner nodded, slowly. “It’s an idea,” she agreed. “Can you use the circlets?”

“Me?” said Hunk. “Nah. I think with my hands. But if you need me to get more Olkari in here, I might be able to do that before Yellow gets wrapped.”

“I think I can keep the landing site clear,” Ryner agreed. “Get me as many of the scientists as you can find. Show them what you’ve showed me. They’ll understand.” She handed the tablet back to him. “I’ll get started.” Resolutely, she grabbed a circlet and set it on her head, walking toward one of the purple vines that had broken through a window.

Hunk jogged back to his Lion, and hoped she really could do it.

~*~

Allura kept the ice ray ready, firing it as and when it seemed needed, and bit her lip.

The Black Lion was tearing into the vines as if it were one giant cat in a catnip patch. Bits of plant matter were flying _everywhere_. It was rather savage to see, and she didn’t want to think too hard about Keith’s state of mind. Clearly, hanging back and playing the role of reservist had had some kind of cost. But it was certainly clawing through the vines – with her helping to make sure that the path opened _stayed_ open.

And Takashi’s little ship became visible underneath the fraying vines, although it didn’t look in very good shape. The vines had done something to it.

Keith seemed to agree with Allura’s concern. At least, there was only a small pause before Black’s gigantic claws ripped the top of the hull off the little ship, and the huge metallic muzzle bent down to snag Takashi like a tiny, tiny kitten before bounding back upward.

“ _Any idea where we should take him?”_ came Keith’s voice, and Allura exhaled in relief that he didn’t _sound_ angry, at least.

“Um. To Ryner, I suppose?” she offered. “Is he all right?”

“ _Unconscious. That’s all I could tell.”_ Black’s head turned toward the city, and it flew off toward Yellow. _“Go back up Lance, I’ll join you soon.”_

Allura turned Blue toward the forest. “He hasn’t called for help. I hope that isn’t because he can’t.”

“ _If it’s because he can’t, I’ll grab Hunk and come help you get him out,”_ Keith promised.

“ _I **can** hear you, you know!” _ came Lance’s indignant reply. _“I’m just fine, backup much appreciated, this one’s big!”_

~*~

Keith carried the unconscious Takashi carefully in Black’s jaws, looking for Yellow. Or, failing that, someone that looked vaguely medical. It took all of possibly two minutes before he realized this was a really stupid time to be trying to hand someone off, and landed Black on top of a building just long enough to drag Takashi inside. He noticed, as he did so, some unpleasant purple circuit-board like lines on the clone’s skin, and swore in galra as he stomped back into the Lion to grab some rope. No _way_ was he leaving someone possibly corrupted to go tromping around the Lion, especially not Takashi, not after _that_ talk.

Takashi would just have to settle for being really thoroughly tied up until this was over and someone with some kind of expertise could take a look at him.

It did take a few minutes, though, and when he’d finished making as certain as he could that things wouldn’t go too far sideways, Hunk was calling.

“ _Hey, I think we’ve got an answer here. What do you want us to do with it?”_

“Great,” said Keith. “Whatever’s going on it’s affected Takashi, so I hope you can help with that when this is over. Meantime can you get the city’s defenses working?”

“ _Probably,”_ said Hunk, with reluctance. _“The vines did some bad damage, but we’ve got power on. There’s a Galra cruiser closing in.”_

“Get those defenses working and use them on it,” Keith advised.

“ _Ryner says don’t keep Takashi near you,”_ warned Hunk. _“You better drop him off with me. The Olkari will take care of him.”_

Oh good, Keith did not say, because he was trying very hard not to make today more of a mess than it already was. Hunk was not someone to distract right now. “Send me your coordinates.” Black lifted up gently, and he got a view of the city. Hunk really was making a difference. A visible one. The vines were withdrawing from the buildings, restructuring themselves as supports for damaged architecture.

Behind him, Takashi groaned. Keith was briefly grateful that the man _wasn’t_ Shiro, because the quickest and most effective answer was to turn around and punch Takashi hard in the head. Then he headed off to Hunk’s coordinates. Better Takashi wake up around people that could help.

Hunk and several Olkari wearing circlets were waiting by Yellow when he dropped in, and he hauled Takashi’s bound form over one shoulder to carry him out. This got a few wide-eyed looks, at least until he deposited the man at Ryner’s feet and everyone could see the spreading purple circuitry.

Several Olkari looked like Keith had just dropped a live grenade on them. They grabbed Takashi and _ran_ into the building with him, leaving Hunk and Keith blinking. Ryner said, to those confused expressions, “There are things embedded in that man’s ...code… that we gave him control over,” she said. “If that control is taken _away_ from him, however...” she shook her head. “It is very fortunate for us that he is unconscious. Those ropes would do nothing at all.”

“Uh,” said Hunk, absorbing that.

Keith settled for, “Lucky for us,” and hoped nobody asked about bruises. To Hunk, he said, “Can you guys get the city defenses working again? Lance is keeping the robeast busy but we’ve still got to take it out.”

Hunk nodded. “Yeah, we can do that I think. They’re really good with these circlet things, it’s just a question of getting the right result in mind. What’re you going to do?”

“Give that cruiser something to focus on besides Lance and Allura,” said Keith. “If you get the city defenses working again you can join me.”

~*~

Lance had a lot of things worked out by the time Allura came to join him.

He’d worked out that the fire beams did damage but the regular cannons mostly didn’t. He’d worked out that he _needed_ to keep moving or the vines would absolutely get him, and then probably the robeast’s cannon would get him. And he’d worked out that nothing he did had a particularly lasting effect since it grew right back anyway.

He was therefore very glad to listen to the comms and hear that Hunk and the Olkari had figured out how to turn this around, because options were getting thin on the ground. And more glad to see Blue’s friendly muzzle speeding towards him. “Hey,” he called. “So it’s just us?”

“ _For the moment,”_ said Allura cheerfully. She stayed higher in the air, to make up for Blue’s slower speed. _“What’s the plan?”_

“Dodging,” said Lance. “I’ve tried everything else that isn’t ‘charge right at it’. It just seems to heal.”

“ _You haven’t wasted your time,”_ said Allura. _“The Olkari have made progress. If Hunk can get their main cannon working we may be able to take this thing out with it. We just need to keep it occupied.”_

“That we can do,” Lance agreed. “It heals, but it doesn’t like the fire beams.”

“ _The vines don’t like ice beams either. Shall we try both at once?”_

“I _like_ the way you think, princess,” said Lance. “Let’s try it on the thing’s cannon. On my mark – three, two, one!”

Red and Blue swooped through the air, on separate arcs so that only one could be targeted, and sent ice and fire at the vine robeast. It had gratifying results, blasting the vines that formed the cannon to mulch that seemed pretty slow to heal.

“ _It’s working,”_ said Allura. _“Let’s turn it up.”_

~*~

Hunk was almost happy. The city was already looking better, with every Olkari who owned a circlet now working to turn the vine-tide to more productive ends. And he was using Yellow to get the last parts of the city’s ion cannon installed. It wouldn’t be much longer, and he’d have a working and powerful weapon to turn on whichever target happened to still be a danger.

He was less than happy about Takashi, but Ryner had gotten him into a medical pod and done something with the vines and the circlet and she _said_ it would be all right, and Hunk had enough problems to solve just now and on a time crunch so he was, with some reluctance, taking her assurances on faith.

He had something to do with his hands, something that would help the team and didn’t require any fancy flying, and that for the time being was plenty. Olkari systems made a lot of sense once you got into the guts of them, even if it did look a bit like an overgrown garden at first. Hunk’s hands moved with confidence across the alien control board; he didn’t need to know what the symbols said, he knew where the connections _went_. Systems around him thrummed with increasing energy. The cannon was warming up, readying a blast.

This was going to work. “The Olkari ion cannon’s online, guys,” he said. “What would you like shot?”

~*~

Keith had chosen to go for the cruiser because he very much wanted – and in a way needed – to sink his teeth into a fight where he didn’t have to play nice. He _knew_ it was within Black’s power. And out in space, the vines couldn’t reach him, couldn’t entangle him.

It was time to _fight_.

The cruiser’s defense systems came online at once, of course, but Black was far faster, far tougher, than the little fighter ships Keith had piloted for months before now and rolled easily out of the line of fire. They were still fairly new to working with each other, he and Black, but claws and fangs were enough for this when properly applied. And they absolutely were; he knew the _insides_ of cruisers very well by now. Knew where the fuel lines ran, where the power reserves were housed. Black pounced and clawed and bounded away, a cat ripping a turtle out of its shell limb by limb, dodging guns and sinking fangs into fighters the whole way.

He’d really _missed_ fighting in a Lion.

“ _The Olkari ion cannon’s online, guys,”_ came Hunk’s voice. _“What would you like shot?”_

~*~

Lance and Allura heard Hunk’s update too, but it took them a few seconds to get into a position to safely answer it. The fire and ice beams _were_ damaging the robeast. They just didn’t have the raw power to destroy it.

“Over here, Hunk,” said Lance, sending coordinates. “We’ll keep it distracted a little longer.”

“ _Tell us when it’s coming and we’ll time our own weapons to join it,”_ added Allura.

“ _Gotcha,”_ said Hunk. “ _Five ticks, starting from….now.”_

Red and Blue got into position, readying their weapons.

The blast from Olkarion City was impressive, to say the least. The robeast was neatly cleaved, with much of its center mass obliterated. Lance and Allura made sure the rest didn’t feel up to regenerating.

“That’s one robeast down,” said Lance happily. “Keith, we’re coming to back you up.”

“ _Welcome to join the party,”_ Keith replied. _“There’s plenty of fighters to chew on.”_

~*~

One Lion had done significant damage to the cruiser. Four lions with a planet based ion cannon made short work of it, and its fighters.

By unspoken agreement, they dropped back down to the city afterward, to check on Takashi. The Olkari seemed to have a good handle on the purple vine stuff now, regaining control of it quickly to haul out of the city. Takashi’s apparent infection was rapidly fading, but Ryner shook her head when the paladins wanted to let him out.

“I’m afraid we’ll need to keep him in there for a while longer,” she said. “We need to be certain he is in full control of himself before we let him return to consciousness. We didn’t predict something like this happening. He’s...a bit more at risk from such attacks than the rest of you. We’ll want to talk with him.”

Hunk didn’t like that answer, and showed it, but didn’t say anything. Allura seemed accepting, Lance more resigned. Keith just shook his head. “He doesn’t like medical pods,” he said quietly. “Probably any option you give him that means less time in one in the long run will be the option he takes.”

“You may be right,” said Ryner. “But we will have to wait until we are certain he chooses what he chooses of his own volition. Thank you, paladins, for coming...but why were only four of you here?”

As both Keith and Lance got aggravated looks, Allura stepped forward. “Pidge was on another assignment when we received your call,” she said. “And it’s a blackout situation. We couldn’t call her.”

Ryner nodded respectfully toward Hunk. “I am grateful that we succeeded. Your help was invaluable.”

And that...seemed to be that. They couldn’t really stay, not with the Kral Zera approaching. Any world could be attacked next. So they said goodbye, and headed back to their lions, and back to the castleship.

“I have to say,” mused Lance from Blue. “That could’ve gone a lot worse.”

“Nice job, Lance,” said Keith from Black. “Keeping the thing occupied the whole time.” He did not mention how much luck had been involved. He wondered, absently patting Black’s controls as if it really were a giant cat, or possibly a giant metallic comfort blanket, if that was something Shiro had done a lot too – seeing where luck had played a role and staying quiet because all it would do was make the others nervous and afraid.

“Can’t wait to tell Pidge about this one,” said Hunk from Yellow. “She is gonna be _so sore_ she missed it. I got scans of the vines from the Olkari for her to study. I mean, not _actual_ vines. They’d mess up our systems. But scans of them.”

“Robeast on four lions,” said Lance. “I think that might be a first.”

“I’m not sure that _was_ a robeast,” mused Allura. “I mean, technically. It seemed more...well, weaponized Olkari tech to start with. I’m not sure Haggar had anything to do with it.”

“Agreed,” said Keith, as the castleship neared. “Probably not a real robeast, but dangerous enough. Hopefully we’ll hear back from Pidge before the next ...whatever it is that hits us.”


	6. The Art Of The Deal

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> For those of you wondering where Papa Holt got to...

The fires that remained were, by comparison, fairly small. Word had apparently gotten around of the victory on Olkarion, and with less than a day to get to the Kral Zera, most of the imperial generals had chosen to focus on getting to the gathering rather than trying for last-minute victories.

Most.

Many of the lesser officials, those who had little to lose and everything to gain by catching the right eye at the Kral Zera, had tried to rack up quick brownie points. They’d found, very much to their surprise, squads of rebel ships lurking in asteroid fields, with sometimes a surprise Lion or four bounding from behind a nearby moon, depending on the number of ships involved.

And Olia was, very carefully, forcing herself to relax. “How did you know the cruiser would head for the asteroid field?”

Elcris blinked. “Commander Asok has been experimenting with a gravity-field mass driver. An asteroid field would provide him with ample ammunition.”

Well. It probably _would_ have. It had also provided the rebel fleet with a thousand ambush points to jump out from. Elcris had suggested the fleet hide among the asteroids and wait for the cruiser to come to them, and...it had. Ordinarily the ships wouldn’t have stood much chance against an armed cruiser.

“You could’ve mentioned the cruiser was unarmed,” said Olia.

“It wasn’t,” said Elcris equably. “It had all the usual armaments. And Asok could have employed them. If he had, we had the field to hide in from them. But I could not say for certain that he would focus first on getting his mass driver powered. It is fortunate for us that he did.”

Olia hmmm’d. “Where is this mass driver, anyway? Maybe we can use it to defend this system. What’s it look like?”

Elcris paused, then moved toward the command console. When the others on the bridge reacted, she froze. Not with fear – everyone in the room could tell that much. A hunter’s pause, to keep from startling the prey.

It took Olia taking a deep breath, and saying out loud, “It’s all right. Go ahead and show us,” for the bridge to collectively relax a bit. Elcris didn’t push it, either, moving with care to send the request for data, calling up the image. “This is the prototype mass driver. It will be somewhere on the remnants of the cruiser.”

But there wasn’t just the image of the mass driver. More information was being sent. The galra woman’s eyes widened as she read it.

“What?” demanded Olia. “What is it?”

“...The Kral Zera,” said Elcris quietly. “The Blade of Marmora has _destroyed_ it. Along with...most of the Empire’s high command.” She smiled a small, fierce smile. “The Empire is _broken_.”

The news rippled around the small bridge. Everyone was staring at Elcris now, not in fear but in shock.

“What...all of it?” asked Olia faintly. “What do you mean, broken? Have we _won_?”

Elcris’ attention was on the transmission she was reading. “...Lotor was still en route when the bombs were set off,” she says. “He is claiming the throne as the strongest surviving contender. There are others also who were not yet at the gathering. Many are not swearing fealty to Lotor as his blood is impure.” The Blade seemed as much in shock as everyone else on the ship. “There is an Empire. But it is significantly smaller than it was yesterday. There are now a hundred, a thousand little kingdoms where those who have not sworn to Lotor will try to build up their base of power.”

Olia looked around at her crew. ‘A thousand little kingdoms’ was a very mixed blessing. It meant no reinforcements, but it also meant no unified policy. The more cruel among the remaining commanders would have nothing to stop them. “And...Voltron?”

~*~

The paladins were in much the same state as Olia and her crew, listening in wide eyed surprise as Kolivan relayed the news.

It wasn’t until the leader of the Blades ended transmission that Lance turned to Keith and demanded, “Did you _know_ he was going to do that?”

Keith blinked. “Didn’t you?” he asked. “Destroying the Galra Empire is what the Blades have been working toward their entire existence. Taking out most of the high command in one go? Of course they attacked.”

“I think the question now is, what do we _do_ now?” mused Allura. “The map of the universe has changed a great deal in just the past week.”

“ _I_ think the question is, ‘how much trouble are we in’,” said Hunk. “These are not nice people. Who are they going to hurt? We can’t put out a hundred fires at once.”

Coran, handling the castle’s flight path, said, “Incoming call. Um...paladins? It’s _Lotor_.”

“That’s _all_ we need,” sighed Lance. “What could he want? We _let_ him go.”

“We’re going to have a lot to do,” said Allura. “We should at least hear him out.”

Keith gave her a level sort of look. “As long as the final decision is with _all_ of us,” he said, which was as close as he felt like going to an agreement.

As the assorted nods and reluctant sounds indicated general agreement, Coran opened the comm. “Prince – er, Emperor Lotor,” he said, somewhat awkwardly.

“ _Paladins of Voltron,”_ said Lotor, and then noted the group’s members. “ _I see there have been some changes.”_

“A few,” said Keith levelly.

Allura shot Keith a _hush_ , _**please** _ look, and stood up. “To what do we owe the pleasure?”

It was a polite enough statement, and Lotor’s image smiled a small little smile. _“Word will have reached you that I have ascended my father’s throne, on a more permanent basis,”_ he said. _“Several worlds have sworn fealty to me. There will be more. I wished to offer a peace treaty with the Voltron Coalition. Perhaps even, if you are willing, an alliance.”_

Keith’s arms folded across his chest. This was almost the most low-key response of the group, as Lance had to get up and leave the camera view just to get the _oh hell no bad idea_ out of his system, and Hunk gave Lotor a very calculating, _you’re playing at something_ look. But it was Allura who spoke. “I’m sure you’ll understand that we would need time to think that over,” she said pleasantly.

“ _It is only reasonable,”_ said Lotor, just as pleasantly. _“I am not your enemy. However, many of the commanders who have refused to swear fealty are abusive and destructive, and just as likely to attack my territory as your own.”_ He waved a delicate hand dismissively. _“But I understand. Trust must be earned. Allow me, then, to offer this token of sincerity. Come to Central Command, and claim him when you are ready to speak with me.”_

Lotor stood aside, and the paladins got a good look at an older man who bore a strong resemblance to Pidge, and Matt. He didn’t seem malnourished or mistreated, although his wrists were bound in front of him and there were sentries on guard behind him.

The communication ended there. Which was just as well; the bridge was dominated by silence for several moments.

Broken in the end by Hunk’s very calm, very _certain_ , “Pidge is going to have a Kaltenecker.”

“We can’t,” said Lance, but his tone had ‘we’re beaten’ all over it. “We _have_ to – and we _can’t_.”

Allura, frowning, asked, “Why can’t we? He made a valid point. Several, really. We’re going to be up to our ears in trouble with all the chaos this week has unleashed. Why _shouldn’t_ we take the opportunity to forge an alliance with the one power that’s offering peace? Isn’t peace what we want?”

“I haven’t spoken with him,” said Keith slowly. “You tell me. Can he be trusted?” Clearly enough, Keith’s default assumption was an emphatic _no_ , but he was listening.

“Absolutely not,” said Lance. “He makes my skin crawl. I _know_ he’s hiding something. I don’t know what, and that makes it worse.”

Hunk said, “Guys, you’re missing a major point here. He’s got Pidge’s dad. There’s no way she’s going to vote against talking with him the minute she hears that.” He paused. “We _are_ telling her, right? We wouldn’t not-tell her that Lotor has her _dad_.”

“Yes, we’re telling her,” said Keith firmly, before any other ideas on that line could be floated. “And you’re right. She _will_ want to get him. So. _Can Lotor be trusted_. Because if we go, and we agree to this, we’re bound by it until he breaks his word.”

“That’s not what you said before,” Lance pointed out. “We’ve all got family. We’ve got to think big picture here.”

Keith gave Lance a very level look. “And I remember what Shiro told me,” he said. “Since you don’t – you tell me. Would you be pushing the same line if it was _your_ family Lotor was offering to free?”

That shut Lance right up, although not happily. Hunk said, slowly, “So...we’re definitely going, then, and we’re definitely agreeing, and what you’re asking is, how likely are we to get tied by it.”

“That seems to be the case,” nodded Allura. “So far he’s held to his word when asked to give it, Keith. When we turned him loose, we had him agree not to attack us, or bring Zarkon to any Coalition world. He held to that. He’s taken over what’s left of the Empire without threatening any of the coalition worlds. So...yes. If we agree to peace, then peace is what we will have. I’m still not sure why anyone is objecting.”

Keith looked the group over. He seemed very nearly lost in his own thoughts for a while. “Lotor plays long games,” he said at last. “And I don’t like games when I don’t know the rules. Hunk, Lance...get a backup plan. Just in case we get very lucky and Lotor has as much of a problem keeping his promises as Zarkon. We’ll need a way out of central command. We don’t really have a choice here. We’ll take the deal.”

Allura frowned. “I don’t want to tell him we’re taking the deal if I’m _lying_ , Keith.”

“You won’t be,” said Keith, although not particularly happily. “I owe him. I won’t be the one to break this.”

Lance said, “You don’t owe him anything. We let him go because he saved you.”

Keith turned a particularly level, careful expression toward Lance. Almost poker steady. “ _I_ owe him,” he repeated, “because he saved _you_.” He nodded toward Allura, and headed for the door. “I’ll be in the training room.”

Hunk made a low, frustrated sort of sound into the silence that followed. “Yeah. Sure. ‘Cos busting out of Galra Central Command is such a cakewalk.”

“If it’s any consolation, you probably won’t need to put the plan into action,” said Allura, still frowning at the door Keith had left through. “But you could try seeing if the Lions will let you talk to Shiro.”

As if on cue, the comm beeped. Coran answered it, spoke quickly, and then turned to the others. “Pidge is coming back,” he said, beaming. “I’ve told her she needs to get back here right away. I think she’s bringing Matt with her.”

Lance sighed. “Yeah. Cos if we’re going to bargain for their dad, they should probably both be here,” he said. “I really don’t trust Lotor, but now I just feel like a heel. I mean, you _can’t_ just tell someone that for the sake of the universe their dad is going to have to be tortured to death.”

“Nope,” said Hunk equably. “So. Get over here and help me get started on a plan. Pidge and Matt’ll probably dive right in on helping if they can tell we’re serious. Less fight, more productive reunion time, and nobody has to feel like a jerk, right?”

“Coran, how long before Pidge arrives?” asked Allura.

“Well, that depends on you, princess,” said Coran. “I mean, on their own, the Green Lion should be home in a few days. Or you can wormhole them in. It’s up to you.”

“Call the Green Lion,” Allura decided. “I’ll bring them in. We probably shouldn’t spend too long overthinking this decision.”

“Cos we’re so prone to that,” said Lance with somewhat dark sarcasm, and headed over to join Hunk.

~*~

Pidge was honestly expecting some kind of chaotic emergency, when Allura offered to wormhole Green back to the castleship. But there wasn’t an alert, nobody seemed to be scrambling for lions, and everyone was home. Coran greeted her, and Matt, as they left the hangar. “Good to have you back,” he said cheerily. “A _lot_ has happened while you were away. So we need to decide where you want to begin. Do you want to tell everyone your results, or get an update on what’s been happening first?”

Matt chuckled as Pidge thought that over. “Always the same problem,” he said. “Computers can do data transfer both ways at once, but we’ve always got to choose.”

“I guess we’d better offer what we’ve got, first,” said Pidge. “So I don’t forget later.”

Coran nodded. “This way, then. Keith’s in the training room.”

He was. Somewhat to Pidge’s surprise, he was not using a sword. Looking murderously frustrated, he was in fact pinned down by hovering laser bees behind generated cover.

Pidge couldn’t help it. She started laughing. “Keith, where’s your sword?”

“Talk to the Black Lion,” growled Keith. “Apparently I have to learn to use a gun now. Computer, _end session_.”

The cover and the laser bees disappeared, and Keith’s pistol-bayard disappeared with them. He still looked murderous, but was clearly _trying_ to calm down. “Sorry. Did you find anything on that ice world?”

“We did, actually,” said Matt. He was wondering what about using a pistol was harder than all the work Keith had done on Olia’s ship; Keith had never looked that put out with the rebels. “We’ve got an ID code for the clone cruiser. The transmissions are on the cryptic side, but with the ID code we can probably track the cruiser down.”

The news did wonders for Keith’s apparent temper issues. “That’s...really good news,” he said. “We’ll have to put that code into the castleship’s systems and see if we can find it.”

“Coran says a lot’s been happening?” Pidge hinted. “Like what?”

Keith paused. He was probably going to remember walking into a room full of angry paladins until the day he died; it wasn’t an experience he wanted to share around. So his tone was careful as he said, “We managed, but...Olkarion was attacked yesterday. Some kind of viral plant beast ...thing. Takashi got pretty badly messed up.”

Both the Holts winced. None of the other Paladins could use the Olkari circlets. “What happened?” asked Matt.

“Hunk worked with the Olkari,” said Keith. “Lance and Allura got the plant beast thing. I kept the Galra cruiser busy.” He shrugged. “We managed. It wasn’t ...necessary, to break communications blackout. But there’s a lot more.”

“I’ll ask Hunk about it later then,” said Pidge. “What’s the bad news?”

Keith shrugged, and apparently decided to just get it over with. “Zarkon’s dead, Lotor’s taking credit, most of the Galra high command’s been blown up, a lot of the rest have broken off into their own little territories, Lotor’s been named Emperor of what’s left, and he’s offering us a peace treaty with your father as a goodwill gesture.”

The Holt siblings were highly intelligent and capable of processing a lot of information quickly. This, however, proved to be a bit too much, a bit too fast. Almost as if it were synchronized, both of them fell back onto the floor as their knees stopped working. Keith gave them both a sort of worried frown, possibly afraid that he’d broken them.

“We were only gone two days,” said Matt faintly. “Olia’s okay?”

“We got the warnings out,” said Keith. “She’s fine. Her ship is fine.”

“We have to go get Dad,” said Pidge, getting up and helping Matt up. “ _Lotor_ has him? When did _that_ happen?”

“We don’t know,” said Keith. “Just that he’s got him now. At Galra central command.”

He was ready for Pidge to charge the door; he reached down and snagged her by the collar before she could run off.

“Let me _go_ ,” said Pidge. “We have to get him out of there!”

“We _are,”_ Keith almost snapped. “We’re going to agree to his terms. I need _you two_ to go help Hunk and Lance sort out a backup plan in case he tries to stab us in the back. But we’re _going_ to take the deal.”

That got her attention; Pidge turned, and stared up at him. “You are? What happened to big picture?”

Keith tried not to take it to heart too much that every time he lost his temper it was apparently etched in acid in everyone’s memory for all time. “If we lose you, we lose Voltron,” he said. “That _is_ the big picture. Go help Lance and Hunk.”

She did, heading out at a respectable speed. Matt didn’t, and Keith gave him a wary look. “They can use your help too,” Keith pointed out. “Lotor’s smart. There’s going to be a trick in this somewhere.”

“I’m sure,” said Matt. “And I’m glad we’re going to get my dad back. I really am. But you’re _not_ okay. And I’m not fifteen.”

Meaning, probably, that he had attention to spare to notice what Pidge hadn’t. “I’ll be fine,” said Keith.

“You just told me the universe has rotated at least ninety degrees in the past two days,” said Matt. “ _Nobody_ is fine.”

Keith gave Matt a measuring look. Shiro wouldn’t say anything, Keith was pretty sure about that. It was important to be believed in, if you were the leader. That meant not showing people when you were uncertain, or upset, because if _you_ were uncertain or upset what did that mean for everyone following you? But Matt was...not really a follower. He wasn’t a paladin, and he didn’t tend to captain any of the rebel ships himself, flying instead with other captains. It kind of put him off to one side a bit, where he could see without having to be seen. Keith knew what you could see from that vantage; it was where he preferred to be himself.

And god only knew when he’d be able to visit Shiro in Black’s odd astral realm again, the way things were going.

“...I don’t think Lotor’s going to stab us in the back,” Keith admitted quietly. “I think we’re going to get your dad back and we’re going to be tied to whatever Lotor’s building. And I have _no idea_ what Lotor’s building. But he won’t be stupid about it the way Zarkon was. We’re taking on a commitment that’s going to give Lotor a blank check.”

“So...the backup plan you’ve got everyone working on, that’s …?” Matt asked.

“Hope,” sighed Keith. “Zarkon couldn’t keep his word to save his life. _If_ Lotor gives us an opening I’d like to survive long enough to take it. I just...don’t think he’s going to.”

“It means a lot to us, to get Dad back,” said Matt quietly. “Thanks, for that. If I get any ideas about the rest of it, I’ll let you know. For now I should probably go help Pidge. At least, when you’re at galra central command, you can find out where that clone ship is. A method to track all the ships _has_ to be in there somewhere.”

“Give me the ID code,” said Keith. “Or make sure Hunk has it. Whatever else happens, when we go there, you and Pidge are going to be busy.”

Matt nodded. “I’ll make sure you have it,” he agreed, and headed off to join Pidge.

Alone again, Keith hesitated. Honestly, he wanted to talk to Shiro. There was something...corkscrew-twisty about Lotor and Shiro was better at dealing with it. But there wasn’t time. Shiro didn’t even know Lotor existed, yet. There was so _much_ to tell him. So much that had happened. And Shiro was definitely not going to like some of it.

No, for now...for good or ill...this was Keith’s maze to solve. Which was frankly terrible, as he was no good at all at mazes.

On the grounds that there was nothing better to do until Allura came back to say they were at the central command, or the others said they had a backup plan, Keith started up the training simulation again.

Thirty seconds in, out of sheer frustration, he started dealing with the laser bees by charging them with his Marmora blade, and using the pistol as random cover fire in the hope that maybe one or two would get hit out of sheer luck.


	7. An Absence of Fun

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There's an abundance of plotting, and some sitting on people, and a sad, sad lack of reprogrammed droids. The author apologizes for the oversight.

They flew the castleship to Galra central command, and nobody was particularly easy at heart about it, even Allura. The floating fortress had pursued them and nearly captured and killed them on several occasions. The sight of it didn’t bring any smiles, nor the many, _many_ Galra warships that hovered about it like clouds of wasps.

Allura wore, not Paladin armor, but one of the gowns she reserved for state occasions. The others took their cue from this, forming a kind of honor guard around her.

It turned out to be the right call; as they stepped out of their relatively tiny castleship, it seemed Lotor had spared no effort or expense. Bright banners hung from the walls that certainly weren’t sporting Imperial crests. The paladins noticed Allura seemed touched by the sight.

Lotor had given Sam Holt a bath, a shave, a haircut, and a change of clothing, to present him as a guest of honor. It was possible the effort worked on Matt and Pidge, who were visibly holding themselves back from running to embrace their father. Lance was radiating a kind of frustrated envy and it wasn’t difficult to see why; as Allura had come as a princess, so Lotor was presenting himself as a king, and the two looked _stunning_ together. Hunk was playing protective sheepdog for the Holt siblings, and Keith...was just watching. If he had any thoughts at all about the presentation, he wasn’t giving any sign of them.

Lotor said, “Welcome, paladins of Voltron. Princess Allura.” He gestured to the banners. “When our fathers were allies, these banners hung in our halls. It seemed time to bring them out again.”

As Lotor descended – with Sam Holt apparently allowed to follow in his wake – Keith reminded Allura quietly, “No agreements unless we’re _all_ there.”

Allura nodded slightly, and Keith gave Lance a ‘hand’ in stepping back away. Lance was rather too busy glaring murder to notice. So it was only Keith who had the attention free to note Sam Holt’s respectful terror of Lotor.

Lotor took Allura’s hand, bowed over it gracefully, and said, “Allow me to present you the tour.” It was clear he meant ‘you’ to mean Allura only, as he added, “I’m certain the rest of you will wish to verify my intentions. You, also, are free to wander this vessel without hindrance.”

As the two began to walk off, Lance got free and tried to follow, only to find the sentries had other ideas on the topic. He turned back to Keith, opening his mouth to _demand_ to go with them, only to find Keith’s attention was now on the tearful, happy Holt reunion.

“You’ve got to let me go with her,” Lance almost growled, though he kept his voice down so as not to distract the Holts. “You _know_ he’s got something up his sleeve.”

“Yeah. I do,” said Keith flatly. “But she can take care of herself, and she wants to do it this way. And we’ve got other things to do while we’re here.”

“He could be charming her right now with all that – that grace, and the hair, and the -”

Keith closed his eyes. “Lance. Shut _up_. Allura does what she wants, when she wants, and all you’re doing right now is convincing half of central command that you’re an idiot.”

Lance did shut up. But he looked deeply wounded as well. And mortified. And Keith tried not to wince at realizing he’d just done it _again_ , said too much of the wrong stupid thing. Wishing, again, that he could’ve just called Shiro and gotten some advice on how to handle situations like this, full of people and their frigging _feelings_ , he took a moment to verify the others were well and truly distracted with talking to Sam and reached out to put a hand on Lance’s arm, looking him in the face.

“Lance,” he said, carefully keeping his voice calm and level. “Is Allura stupid?”

Hurt shifted to anger. “You know she’s not,” said Lance shortly.

“You remember when Nyma chained you to a tree?” asked Keith. “Think Allura would’ve gotten chained to a tree?”

Aaand now Lance was turning a bright shade of red. “...No,” he said, looking away. “But she was...remember in the other reality, how she was with the other Alteans?”

“Yeah,” said Keith. “I remember. She saw through them in the end, Lance. You’ve got to trust she’ll do it again. You can’t blame her for wanting to at least hear out someone who’s also Altean. She’s all on her own except for Coran.”

“And us,” said Lance quickly, but couldn’t face Keith’s very pointed stare for long. Keith knew a _lot_ about the effects of being alone. “... _We’re_ not buying this though, are we?”

“No. We’re not,” said Keith. “But for now Allura’s got to do things her way. And when we find out what’s really going on then maybe we can do something.” He nodded toward the Holts. “And that’s our first piece. So get yourself together and give me a hand with it.”

~*~

Hunk loved group hugs and reunions. So getting to watch Matt and Pidge practically smother their father in hugs was pretty much worth the price of having to be in Galra central command to see it. Galra weren’t all that big on feasts, apparently – or at least, central command wasn’t – so it was bowls of food goo on some steps out of the way of foot traffic while the basics of relative okayness were covered. He could see Keith and Lance chatting off to one side, but nobody was yelling or punching anything, so it seemed as good as it was going to be. He was still relieved when the two came to join them, and moreso that no one seemed injured.

“So where _were_ you?” asked Matt. “I mean, it’s great you’re okay, but we were looking everywhere.”

“A prison colony,” said Sam. “For scientific sorts, judging by the people I worked with. Lotor’s idea. We were fairly well treated as long as we worked on projects we were assigned.”

“ _Lotor’s_ idea?” asked Pidge.

Sam nodded. “So I was told. That I was really very lucky, because Zarkon wasn’t interested in scientific prisoners – he preferred Haggar’s magic. I suppose Lotor realized I could be traded when he saw that the paladins of Voltron are all human. There aren’t a lot of us out here.” He looked briefly worried. “What did you have to do?”

“We had to agree to Lotor’s peace,” said Keith quietly, because he saw no point in shielding Sam from that.

“And we’re not _all_ human,” said Lance, though after Keith gave him a pointed look he clarified that with, “Allura’s a paladin too, and she’s Altean.”

The word meant nothing to Sam, clearly, who gave a bemused sort of nod. “Well. If you’re making peace with the Empire...what about all the other worlds? The ones that aren’t with Lotor?”

“Still working on that,” said Keith. “When Allura and Lotor are done with their tour.”

Sam looked out where the princess and the new emperor had gone. “How can I help?”

~*~

The Holts went back to the castleship, not least because Pidge wanted to give her father the whirlwind tour, and Keith felt it was a good idea to keep Sam as far away from Lotor’s forces as they could get at the moment. But help was not unwelcome.

The remaining three paladins made their way into central operations, where the floating fortress kept track of – and issued orders to – every vessel in the Empire. And, currently, at least kept track of quite a lot of vessels that had rebelled against it.

“...I thought our map was pretty good, up until about two seconds ago,” was Hunk’s quiet assessment. “That’s a _lot_ of ships.”

Lance was still more than a bit preoccupied with worry about Allura, but had to agree. “And a lot of them right here. I can’t believe Lotor’s letting us just ...walk in here.”

But he clearly was. It wasn’t just sentries in here, but galra officers. Who clearly had orders to be helpful to the paladins whether they wanted to be or not. Which did put a crimp in _some_ of the things Keith had hoped to try to do, but – it certainly fit in with the ‘Lotor: Not An Idiot’ theory.

Hunk said, “Lemme borrow your hand here, Keith,” indicating a console. Keith obligingly put his hand on the palm plate, activating it. “Thanks.” Quick taps, and a single ship on the massive maps got brighter. “There’s our hiding friend.”

Lance took a look, copying coordinates. “It’s pretty far away. Like, _really_ far away.”

“Does anyone know where Haggar is?” asked Keith. “Is she on this base too, or somewhere else?”

To the startlement of all three paladins, one of the galra officers growled, “The witch isn’t here. Hasn’t been since the Kral Zera.” There _might_ have been relief in the tone. “Emperor Lotor can’t stand her. Seems to be mutual. But she could come back any time. Some of the Druids are here.”

“Good to know, good to know,” said Hunk warily.

Keith was studying the map too. He entered some data into the console, but nothing in the display lit up. A few more tries, still nothing.

Lance asked, “Are you testing how much Galra you know?”

“Doesn’t matter,” said Keith. “The cruiser we want isn’t one that Lotor’s protecting. We can take care of it. Come on. We’ll want to be back at the castleship before Allura gets back. I’m sure she’ll have a lot to tell us.”

Lance’s expression curdled like sour milk. “Oh. _Joy.”_

~*~

They split up once back at the castleship; Lance went to the training room, Hunk back to his beacon work (and a few other projects) and Keith to the bridge.

This was one call he _didn’t_ want to share with the group. Not yet, anyway. “Kolivan,” he requested.

It took a few moments, but soon enough the master of the Blade was there. He blinked, seeing Keith alone. “Keith,” he replied.

“I think we may have a problem.”

Kolivan blinked again. “In truth we very likely have several,” he replied. “Which is usual.”

Keith took a deep breath. “Lotor is going to get ...at the very least, probably non-interference from Voltron. Might go as far as an alliance.”

“You are the leader of Voltron now,” Kolivan pointed out. “It is within your perogative to refuse. Although I would like to know why.”

It was Keith’s turn to blink. “Firstly, no it’s not. Voltron doesn’t work like that.” Or shouldn’t, anyway. “Second, don’t tell me you’re considering it.”

“Zarkon is dead,” Kolivan pointed out. “The Empire is broken. Surely now is the time to begin the creation of a new, better Empire for the galra.”

Oh. Put like that, Keith could see his point. Still, “Maybe...not _yet_ ,” he said slowly. “Lotor offered us open access to central command’s systems. I took the chance to look up a few things.”

“And you are concerned,” Kolivan guessed solemnly.

“You know those enhanced quintessence supply lines we were tracking?” asked Keith. “They’re not there. They’re not anywhere in the system. I could find every cruiser, no matter how classified. Could see where _Haggar’s_ cruisers are. But the enhanced quintessence is not there. Not the source, not the refinery, not the supply ships. Nothing.”

Now _Kolivan_ was concerned, because both of them knew Lotor was involved heavily in that project. For nothing to be in the system indicated Lotor was still working outside the boundaries of even his diminished empire. The old galra did not like hearing that. “...Possibly he mistrusts Haggar,” he offered.

Which...was again a good point. Whatever Lotor was doing it didn’t seem to require Haggar or her druids, and since refining quintessence seemed to be a _lot_ of the base of her power… “He’s very interested in Allura,” he mused aloud.

“That may be personal or political in nature,” said Kolivan. “He is not of pure blood, and may be curious about his heritage, much as you have been. Or it may be a political move, a signal that he wishes to make the empire more inclusive.”

“Is the Blade of Marmora going to join Lotor?” asked Keith bluntly.

Kolivan didn’t answer quickly. The yellow eyes narrowed as he considered the question and its implications. “I had been considering the offer, particularly since it seems Voltron will also be allying with him,” he admitted at last. “A viewpoint that you must consider he will be likely to exploit in the future. Of the warlords and self-styled rulers we now have, he is the only one offering peace. It is a bold move and one few will have reason to reject.”

Keith’s eyes closed. _Crap_. He hadn’t thought of that at all. He wasn’t sure Allura had either, the domino effect of Voltron being seen as Lotor’s ally and friend. He thought of the banners Lotor had hung, and understood _Lotor_ absolutely _had_ thought about it, and embraced the idea.

Kolivan worked hard, very hard, to maintain his emotional distance at all times. He seemed to consider it important to live by example. But he’d also been Keith’s mentor for many months, and sometimes – not often, but sometimes – he would make a decision that might, from a particular angle, from a certain point of view, be considered to be emotionally motivated. “But you make a valid argument,” he said quietly. “It is not a good sign, that this new quintessence is even now kept from official record. It suggests that Lotor’s motives and goals are not transparent. The Blade of Marmora will not choose a side in this civil war yet.” Even as Keith looked relieved, he added, “But I will rely upon you to keep us informed. It seems certain that if his motives _are_ clouded, what he presents to you and to your companions will be at least tangential to his true goals. We may be able to discern much from what he is forced to reveal.”

“Understood,” said Keith. “Although Allura won’t like it.”

“Secrets from your team?” asked Kolivan, his tone suggesting that was a risky move.

Not that Keith was unaware of it. But he could only shrug. “He’s half Altean.”

Kolivan nodded slowly. It really was all that needed to be said. “Until next time,” he said, and the call ended.

Keith let himself collapse into a chair, spending a while looking up at the huge Balmera crystal. For now the bridge was quiet, everyone busy about their own problems or concerns. Quiet was nice. The tired thought floated through his mind that there had to be some kind of cosmic joke involved in Voltron being made up of lions. ‘Leading’ it was _exactly_ like trying to herd cats.


	8. Windows

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> * I should probably have been clearer in my comments about Krolia.
> 
> * Thanks go to whoever asked Josh Keaton about what Shiro would have to say regarding Keith's suicide attempt/heroic sacrifice moment, although I'm not going to claim that I've used the results as he might have intended.

Haggar eyed her pawns with some distaste. They made no secret of being truly loyal only to Lotor – though apparently that hadn’t stopped them from betraying him – and given those two facts, their reliability was not so much ‘in question’ as provable fact.

Still. They were not incompetent. They had retrieved Sendak on command, which could not have been easy. And they had _survived_ , which under the circumstances was ...almost impressive.

And they were not druids.

Initially, Haggar had thought to perhaps use them, as she had used their teammate. But Lotor had cut Narti down the moment he recognized Haggar’s magic; while it didn’t concern Haggar if Lotor chose to do that with these three as well, they _were_ a non-replenishable resource. And she was certain they knew much of Lotor’s plans. While prying it out of them would likely not work, that didn’t preclude them inadvertently revealing more than they might like.

Acxa noted Haggar’s attention and said, “We will be at central command in four vargas.”

“Good,” said Haggar neutrally. It wasn’t, not really. Lotor had invited the paladins in for parley – a foolish maneuver, one Zarkon would never have wasted time on, but Haggar sensed opportunity therein. A chance to study the enemy closely, perhaps find a weakness.

Perhaps find out what had happened to her _clone_. She needed to decide what to do with the remaining specimens, after all. Haggar did not believe in wasted effort. Living beings could always be put to _some_ kind of use. She turned her attention to the tentacle-headed Ezor. “I will have a task for you,” she said.

Ezor, who was currently seated in a chair upside down, said, “Well, that’s good, I have to say this has been a _really_ boring trip.”

“I am certain that if it is excitement you desire, I can find the means to provide it,” Haggar replied. Ezor caught the real meaning in her tone, and sat up properly. Unrepentant, utterly unrepentant, but respectful. And a touch resentful.

“What is the task?” asked Acxa, mediating as she seemed to do instinctively.

“That will be for Ezor,” said Haggar. “Inform me when we have arrived.” Without further comment, she turned and left them.

Zethrid sighed. “At least you get to do _something_ ,” she griped at Ezor.

~*~

Kolivan found her in her quarters, removing her imperial officer’s armor piece by piece. Each was cleaned and inspected for flaws or damage before being stored; the stuff wasn’t that easy to come by, and this was a fitted set. No telling when it might come in handy again.

“Any difficulties?” he asked mildly.

“No,” she said, without pausing or looking up from her work. “The Kral Zera seems to have taken out every general Ranveig bragged to.”

“And the superweapon?”

“Isn’t a _thing_ , Kolivan. It’s alive,” she said shortly. “And as far as anyone knows, unkillable. Ranveig had it behind several reinforced barriers.”

Kolivan frowned. “If any of the surviving officers acquire it -”

She looked up, then, giving him an impatient look he by now knew far better than he liked. “I sabotaged all the weapons,” she said. “Took the sentries offline and changed their codes before sabotaging the main computer as well. The ‘superweapon’ is now roaming free on an empty, unarmed base. _If_ any idiots come across the rumor of Ranveig’s superweapon and go looking for it, they’re going to get eaten. Bait and trap in one creature.”

It wasn’t what she’d been ordered to do. But she didn’t often do exactly as she was ordered to do. “What do you know about the weapon?” Kolivan asked instead.

“Ranveig ran across a shipment of quintessence,” she said. “Nothing documented. Much more powerful than the usual stuff. Being Ranveig, he experimented. Whatever it was, it doesn’t play well with living tissue. The weapon was the result.” She’d finished putting away the officer’s armor, down to the undersuit now, over which Blade armor was put. “I can tell you when and where he found that shipment, but we never saw a second one.”

No...no she would not have, Kolivan mused. “That would be useful,” he said.

“My cover is intact,” she noted. “Though I should probably wait a while before using it again. What needs doing, in the meantime?”

~*~

Keith took the mala from his drawer, running fingers over it. Maybe the pictures would be more helpful, but it wasn’t as if paladin armor came with an abundance of pockets. It needed to be something he could keep on him at all times, if it would work at all.

The sad reality of it all was ...he didn’t really have _time_ to spend in the void with Shiro. There was too much happening, too much he had to at least be available for. And he knew what Shiro would say if he brought it up as a choice. He had a duty, while he was black paladin. To look after the others, to be ready to fight. Even though Shiro needed help too, Keith knew he’d _shove_ Keith back to doing that duty if the topic were brought up. And if it weren’t brought up by Keith, it would eventually be brought up by Shiro himself.

And Keith knew that he didn’t want to hear those words, no matter what tone Shiro chose to use. He didn’t want to hear Shiro sending him away.

So he wrapped the mala around his wrist, and headed for Black’s bay, hoping it would be enough. Because if he couldn’t spend his time with Shiro, then Shiro needed to be given whatever he could to get _himself_ out.

He had to use the zipline to get there, because his bond with Black was still fairly tenuous and Black wouldn’t lower its head for him most of the time. Settling in the cockpit, he said, “I need this to come with me this time. Okay? Not a ghost or ...image or whatever. The real thing. For Shiro. Okay?”

Black obliged, but once in the astral realm its head _did_ lower. To glare at Keith. There was a sense of ...disgruntlement. Keith rather got the idea the Black Lion did not appreciate being treated as a go-between. He raised his hands. “It’s to help him. I promise.”

Even a low growl from the Black Lion could reverberate like a stack of bass speakers at a concert. Keith took the hint and got on with it. Navigating the field of clones wasn’t any more pleasant the second time around, but knowing it was there did help with emotional preparation. Then it was just a matter of following the purple-black lines into Shiro’s memories.

When the memories had cleared, leaving Shiro catching his breath, Keith approached. “Hey.”

Shiro gave bearhugs even better than Hunk. _Shiro_ knew when to _stop_. “Hey,” he said warmly. “I was wondering if you’d make it back. How long has it been?”

Keith actually had to think about that. “Um. Maybe a week?” he hazarded. “But it’s been a really busy week.” As Shiro’s expression shifted to serious-leader-face, Keith sighed. “I probably won’t be able to come back for a while. You...may have to get yourself out of this, Shiro.”

“What’s happened?” asked Shiro, solemn now. “If you won’t be able to come back, you’d better tell me everything you can.”

Ohgod. Keith’s eyes closed. “You mean from when you disappeared?” he asked faintly. That was a hell of a lot and he didn’t even _know_ how some of it had happened.

“It can’t be _that_ bad,” said Shiro reasonably, but when Keith’s expression didn’t budge, he frowned. “...Okay, apparently it can, but tell me anyway.”

~*~

Takashi went over every system personally. It wasn’t that he didn’t trust the Olkari engineers, or the rebel engineers for that matter, but if this was to be his ship going forward he wanted to understand every inch of it. He’d relied a lot on Pidge and Hunk for things like this before, but he’d be flying more or less alone now.

The vessel was more of a fighter ship than the rebellion’s usual boxy cargo vessels. Takashi knew himself well enough to know he’d wind up looking for trouble, sooner or later, and he might as well lend a hand by flying escort for less well-armed ships.

A few things he’d made absolutely _certain_ to have on board were: spare parts for vital systems like life support and water recycling, distress beacons, and the emergency transponder that would contact the Voltron castleship. And first aid materials. He’d come too close to dying on too many occasions, several of them _in space_ , to feel comfortable with less than the most redundancy he could manage. Other than that, though, the ship was a relatively new design; most of the rebels weren’t really fighters at heart, but with the coalition slowly gelling as a force, the need for ships that could go on the offensive and were more maneuverable than the standard ships had risen.

In theory, he was supposed to name it. In practice he was still getting used to everyone calling him ‘Takashi’ and was honestly thinking of maybe trying something else just in case the ‘original’ Shiro resurfaced, and thus naming his ship was very much a secondary concern. He’d be happy if the thing just worked as advertised.

A shadow fell over his schematics screen and he looked up to find a galra woman looming over him. He’d raised his cybernetic arm and almost activated it before noticing she was wearing Blade armor. “You _really_ need to not do that,” he said quickly.

She seemed...honestly rather amused by his response, giving him the impression of a cat watching a startled mouse jump. “You _are_ human,” she said. “I’m assigned to be your...well, it looks like ‘co-pilot’.”

“Did someone tell you I wasn’t?” asked Takashi warily. At this point he wasn’t sure _what_ the Blades knew about him. “And I didn’t request a co-pilot.”

“No. But you need one,” she said, and proceeded to familiarize herself with the ship, which was a bit snug for her. She wasn’t as big as many galra women, but she was still somewhat taller than Takashi. “You, specifically. You need someone who will shoot you if the empire takes control again.”

Apparently the Blades knew a _lot_ , then. “And you volunteered?” he said flatly. The idea of being shot by a galra did not appeal, _regardless_ of the validity of the reason.

“No,” said the woman brusquely, without taking offense, and without pausing her task. “I was assigned. I’m somewhat familiar with how humans behave. More than most of the order. Kolivan felt I would see warning signs others might miss.” She nodded approval of the ship. “You can call me Krolia. When do we take off?”

~*~

This was fun. It wasn’t as much fun as it _could_ have been – as much fun as, say, using her skills to see how oblivious the paladins really _were_ – but it was still fun.

Ezor slipped invisibly along the castleship’s corridors, searching. Haggar had been a sort of useless combination of specific and vague; she had to find something Haggar could ‘use’. Something she could take and change in some way, without it being particularly noticeable.

So far, the search had not proven fruitful. For a big ship, the castleship contained very little. Ezor drifted silently from room to room, taking care to _avoid_ the Lion bays as she didn’t trust them not to see her. She flattened herself against the wall as the trio of Holts breezed by (more than once), Pidge chattering at high speed about where they’d just been and where they were going and what was Awesome about it, which Ezor found amusingly helpful. Lance was easily avoided, training against laser bees. Hunk the same, putting little boring devices together. Allura, she knew, was with Lotor. She wasn’t sure where Keith was, and that made her careful since until she ran across him, he could be _anywhere_. And it was important not to be caught.

(Maybe the old father? Ezor mused. No. The old man didn’t look like he wanted to stay. Haggar wanted something that would stay.)

Eventually she found her way to the sleeping quarters. Pidge’s were chaotic – ironically making it harder to search, since the mess would be a _different_ mess if disturbed too much – and Lance’s was a baffling menagerie of wires and devices and things connecting in some Frankensteinian way to a screen that did who _knew_ what. Hunk’s quarters were comfortable and bright and very organized. Ezor almost mistook Keith’s quarters for an empty room at first. None of them held anything Ezor thought Haggar could use.

Shiro’s quarters were only slightly more inhabited than Keith’s, but felt emptier. But she found something Haggar could use in them. Relieved that she didn’t have to go back and start all over, she tucked it under an arm and slipped invisibly in the direction of the hatch.

~*~

As predicted, it had _not_ gone all that well, although some events were apparently easier for Shiro to deal with than others.

He’d been upset (in an apologetic way) at Keith’s brief initial stint at leadership. Stunned, and more than a bit haunted, at the idea that someone had _made a copy_ of him that worked so well it fooled everyone _including_ Keith (although he’d chided Keith a bit for _honestly believing_ he, Shiro, would treat him that badly, especially in front of the rest of the team, which resulted in a semi-lengthy digression into why Keith _had_ ), carefully admiring of Kolivan’s attempts to teach Keith and utterly disbelieving of Keith’s reports of the ‘Voltron On Ice’ show and the entire publicity-stunt series that went with it, although he was relieved he hadn’t personally had to be part of it. (He conceded there was probably a good reason for it all and promised to ask the rest of the team about it later, but from Keith’s ‘and then this stuff was being broadcast’ perspective it was just baffling.)

Then they got to the huge coalition effort around Naxzela. There was a lot Keith couldn’t tell him about it save in broad strokes, but Shiro seemed to get the idea pretty well. For a bit Keith thought probably _not_ tell him about the shield dive, but decided no, everyone else knew already and the way they’d reacted it would probably be one of the first things they asked Shiro about when they got the chance. ( _So did Keith tell you about that boneheaded thing he did while you were away?_ ) So, very carefully, Keith filled Shiro in on that, too.

He’d been prepared – although flinchingly – for anger, like Lance. Or hurt, or worry, or disappointment, the way Allura and Coran had been.

He had _not_ been prepared for Shiro to pull him in for a tight hug, and in a voice that held tears, tell him roughly, “That’s not how we do things, Keith.”

And he had not been prepared for that to make _him_ want to cry either, just at the way Shiro said ‘we’. It wasn’t the casual, team ‘we’. It was very personal, a ‘we’ made of himself and Keith, a promise not to give up, _ever_.

It derailed either of them saying anything else for a while, as they each adjusted their mindsets a bit. Shiro had always valued Keith highly, but hearing how utterly Keith had _missed_ him was...a lot more than he’d expected, and he did kick himself a bit that he’d laid that on Keith’s shoulders, to lead after him, without ever thinking just how hard that would be to do while grieving. And Keith had always been ready to do anything, take any risk for Shiro’s sake, but the idea that he would _hurt_ Shiro by dying – however necessary it might seem – put a lot of things in a new perspective. A _strange_ perspective, but one he needed to hold on to.

Eventually, though, even in a world as strange as this one, hugs and tears had to come to an end. “You’d probably better tell me the rest of it,” said Shiro quietly, although he didn’t let Keith go entirely.

And although that was a lot, still – Lotor, Zarkon, getting Takashi healed, the trip to Earth, this potential new alliance – it was told a lot more easily than Keith would have expected it to, and Shiro just listened, until at last it was mostly caught up.

“And you don’t trust Lotor,” Shiro said at last.

“No. Allura’s talking to him now, and maybe something will change, but...” Keith shrugged. “He’s clever, and there’s a long game here, and I don’t trust it.”

“But he’s not behind this other business, that’s keeping me here?” asked Shiro.

“I don’t think so,” said Keith. “I mean, if he were, I don’t think he’d have been surprised at Ulippa. And if he could do all this kind of thing I don’t know that he’d be so interested in Allura.”

“This kind of thing,” Shiro echoed. “Clones aren’t hard for the Galra to do, Keith.” He raised his cybernetic hand as a broad indicator of their technology.

“No,” said Keith. “ _This_.” He pointed down at the purple-black ‘ground’ beneath Shiro’s feet. It meant breaking the light hug, but he got to his feet and tugged Shiro after him. “I don’t know if you’ll be able to see, but you _need_ to see. I don’t think I can come back after this, so you’ll have to find your way out.”

“If I _don’t_ see, you’re doing a great job of being confusing about it,” said Shiro dryly, but let himself be dragged.

Keith led the way back to where he knew Black waited, and the field of clones between. He held Shiro’s hand to be sure Shiro didn’t get lost or pulled away, and pointed down again when the lines were visible. “There. Do you see them now? The lines?”

Shiro did seem to see them, crouching down, trying to touch them – first with his human hand, then with the metal one. “I can’t affect them. What _are_ they?”

“From what you’ve told me, I think they’re why you keep reliving memories,” said Keith. “Each of those lines goes to one of the clones. If we keep going you might see them, or hear them. Someone’s giving the clones your memories. And all the clones are between you and Black, so Black can’t bring you back.”

Shiro shook his head. “Won’t,” he clarified. “The Black Lion’s been Zarkon’s prisoner too, Keith. It’s not going to act against what it sees as more of his victims. I think...this may be something I need to deal with.”

“We’ve found the clone ship,” said Keith. “I just need to get the others together and we can go take it out.”

Shiro pointed down. “And that goes away too?” he asked. “The spell part, I’m going to have to break.”

Keith heard a low growl in the distance. The Black Lion wanted this to conclude. He admitted to himself that he did probably need the reminder. He didn’t _want_ to leave Shiro to face this alone. The universe, however, had done a sterling job of making clear that it did not function according to Keith’s personal preferences. He looked down at his wrist. Black had granted his request; where his hands were translucent, astral, the string of beads were dark, solid, and real. He unwound them and held them out. “I brought you this.”

Shiro blinked, taking them with the care reserved for old, valuable things. “My mala,” he said. “Keith, _how_?”

“I told you we went back to Earth,” said Keith. “They were in a box in the secure storage unit. Um. I got your photos, too. The ones you decorated your quarters with. I didn’t think I could talk Black into letting me bring them here though. Whatever’s going on here, you need to focus.”

Shiro’s human fingers ran along the string of old, polished beads. Keith had just described a small novel in two sentences. Garrison security wasn’t a joke...or hadn’t been, before Kerberos. He held the center bead up, looking for the little holographic temple inside. “So...of course you brought my meditation beads,” he said faintly, putting the ideas together. “Thank you.”

“Just ...make it out of here,” said Keith quietly. “Promise me, Shiro.”

Keith didn’t like that this time, he couldn’t save Shiro. Fair enough, Shiro felt. He’d be kicking himself for a long time to come that he’d somehow been so vague, so unclear, that Keith had genuinely thought _throwing himself at a shielded cruiser_ was a solution he, Shiro, could live with. “We all have to be there for each other,” he said. “You’ve done all you can here, and I appreciate it. I do. I’ll trust you with the team. You trust me to sort this out.”

Keith nodded, and with a last quick farewell hug headed back toward Black. The imposing presence was very noticeable as he neared the Lion, the yellow eyes glowing at him. “I’ve done all I can,” he told the Lion. “...Thanks.”

This time the transition was smooth, painless. He opened his eyes and ...it was just Black’s cockpit, exactly as it had been. He looked at his wrist, and was not surprised to find it was now bare. Keith patted the controls, aware he’d never really talked to Black the way he’d talked to Red. Black was Shiro’s. Black had always been Shiro’s. He couldn’t blame the Lion for being aggravated at being treated like a gobetween. At the same time, right now he didn’t have anything to say other than, “Thanks.” By the chronometer, Allura might return at any time, and then they’d have to sort out what to do about Lotor.


	9. Devastation and Reform

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Somehow, it's almost impossible to write Lance using a sword without getting almost Spaceballs about it. "I see your Schwarz is as big as mine...now let's see how well you handle it!"
> 
> Honestly, in this chapter, I think the gold medal for schwartz handling goes to Krolia, but that's just me.

As it happened, the training room was on his way. Keith was used to being the only one that made rigorous use of the place, but apparently things had Changed during his time with the Blades. Curious who was in there, he made his way inside quietly, so as not to distract whoever it was.

Lance was...not so much _training_ as attempting to _murderize_ several laser bees. Keith recognized it as one of the more advanced programs; one he could do with his sword, but not the pistol Black had decided he needed to learn to use.

Lance was using a rifle, and doing rather well with it. Keith leaned back against the wall to watch; he might as well see if he could learn something while here. Lance was easily the best marksman on the team.

He was also, apparently, _severely_ aggravated. Which wasn’t like Lance, and which probably in turn explained the training session. Much better to take it all out on a bunch of annoying laser bees. More shots connected than not, but the program stepped up intensity as more of the bees were hit. As it was supposed to do.

Keith was surprised to say the least to hear Lance just about _scream_ in frustration – but not half as surprised as he was a second later, when Lance’s rifle became a broadsword, which Lance immediately used to clear the field of laser bees.

It was a kind of amusing consolation to give Lance the shock of his life in turn by remarking, “Nice work.” If Lance had been a cat, he’d have been clinging to the ceiling by his claws, fur a-poof. The sword was held before him like a talisman rather than a defensive weapon.

“!!!” Lance yelped. “When did _you_ get in here?”

Keith blinked. There was just no getting anywhere with Lance sometimes. Compliment or insult, neither ever worked out. He turned to go.

“No – wait,” said Lance, more calmly. “I’m sorry. I just wasn’t expecting anyone to be there. Did you talk to Shiro?”

“Yeah,” said Keith, turning back. “I won’t be able to see him again, I think. Black wants this resolved, not drawn out. I told him what I know of what’s happened since he vanished.”

“I’m sorry,” said Lance. Then paused. “What, _all_ of it?”

“All of it I know about,” Keith confirmed levelly. “You can explain that icecapades bullshit to him yourself. I have _no_ idea how you guys hit on _that_ as a good idea.”

“Hey, that was _fun_ ,” said Lance indignantly. “Autographs, hot alien girls swooning over me in _groups_ , toy lines, the _works_.”

Keith just gave him a level look. He knew about all of that. Because Allura had been ‘Keith’ and the Blade of Marmora hadn’t been given that much fodder for light hearted prankery in literal centuries. He nodded at the red bayard-sword in Lance’s hand. “How long has it been doing that?”

“Uh….” Lance checked his chronometer. “About five doboshes. Why?”

So much for it being fortuitously tied to whatever Black was trying to communicate. “You took out the light bees with it,” Keith pointed out instead.

“Well...it’s sharp?” said Lance. “Yours is always sharp too. I like the shape of mine better though.”

Keith decided then and there that people would be pulling out his tongue with hot pincers before he’d start comparing blades with Lance. He knew how the universe liked to screw with him. Pidge would only have to hear such a conversation once before suicide would really start looking attractive. It did make phrasing a bit tricky, but he probably needed to practice thinking before speaking more anyway. He tried, “I’ll train with you sometime, if you want variation from the automated levels.” That sounded safe.

Lance looked indignant. “You just want an excuse to stab me with your sharp pointy bits,” he said, and Keith realized that honestly, no amount of careful internal editing was going to keep Pidge from laughing herself breathless in the near future. He could edit himself all he wanted, but there was no editing Lance.

Oh well. If the rock’s going to roll, roll with it. Keith reached out his hand, and the black bayard materialized the pistol in it. “Marksmanship for sword practice,” he offered. “I stab you, you shoot me.”

“What a cute little gun!” said Lance, and Keith couldn’t for the life of him tell whether Lance was trying to be sarcastic or not. For all he knew Lance _did_ think little guns were cute. He’d known more than a few gun nuts on Earth that thought that way. “Looks kind of like the standard issue Galra pistol actually. Seriously, you can’t use it? Why would the bayard give you a weapon you can’t use?”

Keith shrugged. “I think the Black Lion’s trying to tell me something. So far my only guess is ‘get the hell on with it’. I’ll help you with your sword training if you can help me hit _anything_ with this thing.”

Lance regarded the red sword, and the black pistol. “Deal,” he said. “Though how you’re going to teach me anything if your bayard’s -”

He didn’t get to finish the sentence. Keith simply drew his Marmora dagger, and awoke the blade to swat Lance’s sword out of his hand.

Lance blinked at the luxite weapon. “...You’re just _full_ of surprises today. Okay. We can train.”

Keith nodded, let the luxite blade revert, and sheathed it again. “So...what’s got you so annoyed?”

Lance bent to retrieve his bayard. “Just had to remind me, didn’t you,” he said. “It’s Lotor. I don’t trust him, I can’t follow them, and I don’t care _what_ you say, I’m worried about Allura being with him on her own.”

Keith considered the available evidence. “...Are you jealous of Lotor?” he asked carefully.

“What?” demanded Lance. “No!” he paused. “Maybe. I don’t know. That’s not it though. I swear this is not just _jealousy_ , Keith. She’s ...awesome. I mean _you_ know that. I’d ...I admit I haven’t taken it well when people latch on to her, but this is _different_. This isn’t a case where I can look at the guy and go ‘okay, he’s good for her, they’ll be happy together’. He’s _going_ to hurt her, Keith. I don’t know what he wants from her but it’s not _her_ and I can’t _protect_ her and it’s-”

It was frustrating him enough that the bayard in his hands became a sword again. A knight’s sword, Keith thought. He’d seen a lot of different styles of sword over the years. A knight’s sword...to protect a princess? The idea might have occurred to Lance, too, but if it had it was upsetting him. He took the bayard’s transformation as a sign of loss of control, and deliberately let it go, trying to calm himself. “You’ve got to believe me, Keith, this isn’t going to go anywhere good.”

“Probably not,” Keith agreed calmly. “But this is Allura. She makes her own decisions. She always has, she always will.”

“You honestly think I don’t _know_ that?” sighed Lance, and waved a hand at the training room around them. “Hence _this_ , man. I knew if I saw them together I’d ...lose it, and he’s so...so _smooth_ it’d just mean she’d never listen to me again about it.”

Definitely jealousy, Keith decided. But not the usual stripe. It wasn’t just that Allura wanted to spend time alone with Lotor. It was ...Lotor was _cool_ , as Lance measured such things. Lotor was effortlessly beautifully awesomely _cool_ , which made Lance feel _uncool_ in his presence, and Lance with his insecurities in overdrive tended to be his own worst enemy. And sometimes the aggravating chief annoyance of everyone around him at the same time.

Part of Keith found this to be such depressingly highschoolish drama that it was hard not to snark about it. This was ‘who’s going to run the known universe’ stuff, not ‘who’s going to go with the quarterback to the prom’. But Shiro had said that you had to be there for everyone, and that included weird things like this. Which was tricky, because his own defense mechanisms involved ‘back away to minimum safe distance and monitor for explosions’. He needed a different tactic here. So, carefully, he tried, “Do you trust me?”

Lance gave Keith a look that suggested spontaneous curly horns had just sprouted. “What’s _that_ supposed to mean?”

Keith shrugged. “Do you trust me,” he repeated.

Lance’s mouth opened, closed. He thought about it. And then shrugged. “Honestly, Keith, there’s probably nothing about you that’s simple enough to be taken down to a yes or no. Why are you asking?”

“Because you seem to think I don’t agree with you,” said Keith. “I do. I think this is going to bite us. I don’t know how yet, or where, or when. But it’s going to bite us. So...I’ll be keeping as much of an eye as I can on this. I don’t think it’s going to go as quickly or easily as Lotor wants. Allura doesn’t trust galra. He’s still half galra, even if he wants to pretend he’s not.”

Lance turned this around in his mind. Keith had said it before, but, “...Why is it you agreeing with me doesn’t help?”

~*~

Takashi, as it happened, was thinking much the same thing. Krolia was...very un-galra-like. That should have meant it was easier to get along with her. It wasn’t. It was like...trying to sing a song you knew well, only to find that for reasons beyond your knowing, everyone else had chosen to sing it in a different key without telling you. Takashi found himself overcompensating more often than not, and Krolia’s amusement only aggravated the situation. It didn’t help – at all – that she seemed to be quite correct; she _did_ have a pretty good handle on humans. At least as compared to ...pretty much anyone and everyone he’d ever met since Kerberos.

“So you’re entirely certain you’re ready to take on half a cruiser’s worth of fighters in this?” she asked conversationally. “The design isn’t a bad one, but we’re still outnumbered.”

“We’re outnumbered regardless,” Takashi pointed out. “But most fighters aren’t well piloted. Skill can beat raw numbers.”

“Up to a point,” Krolia agreed. It didn’t sound as if she were personally invested either way. “You’re well aware that a cruiser is far past that point. If you’re looking for a heroic death, just drop me off somewhere with air, and once I’ve witnessed you blowing yourself up I will return to Kolivan.”

It _sounded_ like the usual galra acceptance of that-which-is. But it wasn’t. Takashi couldn’t put a finger on how he knew that, though. Krolia did care. He wasn’t entirely sure about _what_ , but ...she wanted to be here. Which made no sense, given she’d already told him why she’d been sent.

Something familiar…

He had a ship to fly, which did take _some_ of his attention. For the moment they were en route to one of the rebel bases, where he could catch up with recent news and see if anywhere needed a hand. Navigating deep space without a Lion’s consciousness was a bit like playing precision darts in the dark with a finger-nail sized bullseye. It didn’t take much at all to miss the target.

But something about her _was_ nagging at him. “You said your job is to shoot me if the Empire looks like it’ll take control,” he said, forcing his tone to stay level. “So why does it matter to you if I find my own way? And don’t tell me it doesn’t. You may have a handle on humans, but I’ve had a while to get the hang of galra.”

Krolia smiled a small smile. _Familiar_. Again. Takashi knew it meant that what was amusing her was imagining his reaction to her answer. But it wasn’t familiar because galra had tried that on him before.

All at once he remembered the hologram Keith had shown him on Olkarion. The one Ryner had made for him, that showed what he would look like if he let them undo whatever was blocking his galra side from expression. It hadn’t been _that_ different. Yellow contact lenses and purple skin…

...and a _rat tail_?

Krolia casually reached over and hit the autopilot button just as Takashi’s eyes widened. “Four quintants, Takashi. I thought a Black Paladin would be quicker on the uptake than _that_.”

“You’re flying with me because you want to know about _Keith_ ,” Takashi almost accused. “You do realize that’s nearly pointless, right? We parted ways pretty early on. The memories I have aren’t mine, and the Olkari did something so they’re not easy for me to focus on.”

“...All right, possibly five quintants,” said Krolia, looking upward. “I was briefed on you. If I were going to ask you about my son, I think I would have started before now. Don’t you?”

She...really did _not_ look old enough to be Keith’s mother. She really didn’t. This was venturing into territories of awkward that were going to take days, if not weeks, to properly sort out, and it didn’t help that Takashi’s first thought was _thank gods Lance isn’t around_. The second was gratitude that whenever Lance _was_ around, Takashi himself was likely to be elsewhere. That was not a meeting he wanted to be near, purely out of a desire to avoid proximal embarrassment. “...All right, then why?” he asked.

“Are you aware of Kolivan’s assessment of Keith?” asked Krolia. “Sentimental. Prone to putting his personal feelings before the success of the mission. Mind you, Kolivan has said that about every Blade at least once.”

“It’s not the drawback he seems so keen to think,” replied Takashi. Of course, he’d personally benefitted, so.

“Most of the time,” said Krolia simply. “Sometimes he’s right. Most of us that live long enough in the order do learn how to balance things. Those that don’t...it kills them, sooner or later.”

“That’s not what I’ve seen,” said Takashi. “Blades are always much too ready to die for the cause. You’ll be lucky if there are any of you _left_ by the time the war’s over.”

“Was that a whole cruiser full of fighters you wanted to find just now, or half a cruiser?”asked Krolia pointedly.

“It’s _not_ the same,” snapped Takashi. “I don’t have a lot of time. A few decaphoebs at most. I want them to count.”

“Which is what most Blades choose to do, too,” said Krolia. “But we surrender much more life than you. For a longer-term success.”

“We’re getting off topic,” said Takashi. “Why did you agree to this assignment, if it wasn’t to ask me about Keith, and it wasn’t just because the order thinks I need watching?”

Krolia’s smile faded to something more thoughtful. Working out the best answer to give, blunt or thorough or both. “If I thought a half-human child could be happy in the Blade of Marmora, don’t you think I would have brought my son _with me_?” she asked.

...oh.

“So...you blame me for that,” said Takashi slowly. Which would be fair. There had been some trickery at work, but it had been for his sake that Keith left the paladins. As it likely would be for Shiro’s that he’d do so again, if and when he found Shiro. Could be quite a grudge list this lady was building.

But she shook her head. “I had several reasons for my choices and blame is pointless. He was safe, on your world. That he was safe for a while is more than most can ask for their children.”

“Then I think you’ve lost me,” said Takashi. “Why would you be here watching me and not going to talk to him?”

“...Humans can be _incredibly_ dense,” Krolia mused. “I’d forgotten.” She reached over, flipped off the autopilot, and entered in a new course. “We’re going to go with _my_ plan now. Are you any good at range, or do you only use your hand?”

“Hey!” Takashi snapped. “Who’s in charge here?”

“At the moment, not you,” said Krolia simply, transferring control to her station. “Humans work better when they solve their problems on their own. So that’s what we will do. The mission I want to see done will give you the most tools to answer the questions you have. And we will both be happy.” She paused. “Eventually.”

~*~

Acxa, Ezor, and Zethrid guarded her quarters. Not that Haggar particularly trusted them to keep _Lotor_ out, but they were reasonably certain to keep everyone else out.

Ezor had done well. The clone had been created to defend itself, prevent itself from discovering its nature. It likely did not remember ever catching several mice and putting them in a portable stasis cell. Humane mouse catching, very Altean.

And _these_ mice had bonds with the Paladins, and the Princess. Even if they were seen, they would not be in danger. They could not speak, and their bond was with the Princess alone – and she, if Haggar was any judge, was now well and truly distracted.

They were _perfect_. Or at least, as perfect as anything not directly created to be her pawn could be.

Haggar released each of them one by one, restraining them to work her magics on them. She would be able to borrow their eyes and ears at any time, but she needed more. The clone had been perfect because, as black paladin, he would always be at the center of events. The mice would need to be driven to do the same thing. Watch the Paladins, always. Stay near enough to see and hear without being noticed. And Haggar would need to be able to redirect them from a distance if she needed to. They might possess basic intelligence, but Haggar was not going to trust the Empire to the judgment of some mildly telepathic mice.

The last being to be enchanted would be the easiest, in many ways. Kova, her own immortal cat that Narti had once kept. She would need the least tampering. Kova would watch Lotor.

On a moment’s consideration, Haggar made a mental note to make certain Kova did not hunt or kill the prepared mice.

~*~

By the time Allura returned to the castleship, everyone else had had ample time to get whatever else they needed to do out of their system. Sam Holt had gotten quarters, a bath, haircut and trim, and new clothes, and Pidge and Matt were explaining Altean food goo as opposed to Hunk’s ‘galactic fusion’ cooking, which had been Hunk’s method of de-stressing. Everyone was more or less lounging in the den, Hunk’s snacks within easy reach of at least two sets of hands at all times, and for the most part there was plenty of general talking about nothing much.

Sam Holt was doing more listening than talking, but it was pretty enthusiastic listening. Keith was also doing more listening than talking, but...in more of a Marmora way, from his old place leaning up against an outer wall with his arms across his chest, despite being in street clothes. Keith was the first to notice Allura’s entrance, giving her a small nod of greeting. There wasn’t time for any more than that. Lance’s enthusiastic “Allura, you’re back! You’re okay!” pretty much set the tone.

Allura smiled at the group. “You can’t really think I wouldn’t call if there was trouble?” she asked. And although she was in a very princessy gown, she held out one hand and the blue bayard appeared in it. In her other hand, she held an emergency transponder. “I did say I would be careful.”

“So, what does he want?” asked Pidge. “I mean, for letting Dad go.” Matt seemed equally interested; Sam just seemed pensive.

“Nothing,” said Allura calmly. “He wanted me to tell you all that he returned your father as a gesture of goodwill. To demonstrate honorable intentions.”

“...Yeah,” said Lance slowly. “Because he’s got so many of those.”

Keith, watching quietly, noticed that Sam Holt’s worried look didn’t budge a jot.

Allura sighed. “Lance, peace must begin _somewhere_. We _know_ that not all galra are warlike or cruel. We _cannot_ intend a peace built on the destruction of an entire race. I absolutely agree that we should take all care, but do we really want to continue fighting _everyone_ when there are other options?”

Lance reddened. He didn’t like it, not at all, but he didn’t have a counter argument. Hunk asked, “What options are you looking at, exactly? I mean, if we can fly away from here free and clear with Pidge’s dad and all...shouldn’t we do that?”

“That would not be peace,” Allura said. “That wouldn’t be changing anything. Do we want to fight Lotor’s empire before we even know where it stands?”

Keith’s question was so quiet the others had to pause for a few seconds to be sure they’d heard it. “Did you ask him about Shiro?”

The question might as well have been _did you tell him about Shiro_, but Allura understood. She seemed...almost embarrassed. “I didn’t want to ask,” she admitted. “It seemed too soon. But I can say it’s very unlikely he’s been in any way involved with the clone project. To say he and Haggard don’t get along would be an understatement to say the least. But he can’t be seen opposing her either. He’s too new to the throne, and the Druids control quintessence production. He has a plan to change that, which he’d like our help with.”

 _Quintessence again,_ thought Keith. Why did Lotor seem so focused on quintessence?

“So...he wants our help, but he _really_ wants our help, not like the work we might do because we owe him or anything,” said Pidge.

“Exactly,” agreed Allura. “Lotor believes that if the Galra have access to unlimited quintessence, he can leverage that to change galra society.”

Keith blinked. That...wouldn’t work. Or it _would_ , but not...quite that way. If he mentally swapped out ‘Galra’ for ‘Lotor’, though, it made a kind of sense. If _Lotor_ had access to unlimited quintessence...well, for one thing he wouldn’t need Haggar, or her druids. Was that why the enhanced quintessence supply ships were nowhere to be found on the imperial map? Had Lotor been hiding his experiments from Haggar, not Zarkon?

“Change the galra...how?” asked Hunk. “They never seem all that interested in the stuff. I mean, not compared to taking over planets, killing people, destroying cities, and that sort of thing.”

“Quintessence is the basis for all Galra technology,” said Allura. “All the ships, weapons, all of it. It’s...why the Empire has destroyed worlds, sucking the life out of them. They’re dependent on it. But give them a new source, an unlimited source, that doesn’t require them to conquer...”

“And they’ll just...stop doing that?” asked Lance. He tried not to sound sarcastic. He didn’t succeed particularly well, but he did try. It didn’t stop Allura giving him an impatient look.

“All the galra worlds will have the exact same problem,” she insisted. “Lotor has Haggar for now, and that gives him an edge, but they’re all tied to quintessence production. For now that means Lotor has leverage to use on rebel factions.”

“Do we want him to win?” asked Pidge, surprised. “Don’t we want to wait for those factions to run out of fuel, then kick those fleets to the curb and free the planets? I mean, that sounds like a better plan to _me_. The galra don’t need most of the known universe. We can liberate _hundreds_ of worlds the way things stand now.”

It was Sam who spoke, absently selecting some of Hunk’s more colorful finger-sized foods. “You don’t want to do too much at once, Katie,” he said quietly. “The Empire is bad, make no mistake, but if you’ll remember your history lessons, the anarchy you get when empires fall can be worse. The rebel generals will know they don’t have a lot of resources left, too. They’ll very likely do anything to extend the time they have before they need to bend a knee, because they won’t be expecting mercy and Lotor...honestly probably can’t afford to show them any. Without the overarching enforcement of the Galra military, it won’t _just_ be galra warships you’ll have to worry about, but pirates from any world in the contested zones, doing anything they can to profit from the chaos. If quintessence is what everything runs on, you can expect quintessence smuggling to be the new career of choice. And the smugglers won’t _want_ their worlds liberated because demand would go down and law enforcement would rise.”

The older man seemed to notice that everyone in the room, except Coran, were just staring at him at this little speech. He looked sheepish at the attention, but said, “It’s never a good idea to over-emphasize science at the expense of the humanities.”

Allura coughed in a manner that suggested she was trying to break the silence more than clear her throat. “I’m afraid he’s right. The factions that have access to quintessence production will last longer. Possibly gather a few allies. But those that don’t...” she spread her hands. “We have one support ship and five lions. The coalition has all it can do defending what we’ve already liberated, especially with this new chaos. There’s just...we can help, and we will, but this is going to be a mess I’m afraid.”

“Okay,” said Hunk slowly. “But what changes if we do side with Lotor? _He_ can’t protect all those little worlds, can he?”

Keith interjected, “It’s about what people see. If Voltron stands with Lotor...that makes him look better to the worlds that want to be freer. And it makes him look a lot stronger to the generals that would stand against him or with him. If we choose a side, that side gets a lot more attractive to a lot of people.”

He didn’t like saying it. He didn’t like thinking about the banners Lotor had hung, knowing Lotor had already thought of that advantage. So it took Keith a few moments to realize the room was staring at _him_ , much as they’d stared at Sam. Lance looked actively resentful. Allura looked...proud of him. Pidge just looked surprised, as if he’d done some kind of trick. So he quickly added, “I talked to Kolivan about it all. The Blade of Marmora won’t choose a side yet, but they’re leaning toward Lotor because _we_ are.”

The sense of ‘oh, _that’s_ where the sudden political acumen came from’ seemed to silently breeze around the room, and everyone relaxed. Rather than annoyance, Keith just felt resigned. It was all temporary, everyone knew it was temporary. He just hated the reminder that everyone was honestly looking forward to him leaving the group again. But he’d promised Shiro he’d take care of them until Shiro could get out of the astral spell, and he would.

“We should get Shiro first,” said Lance. “You got the location of the clone ship. Let’s go take care of that, before it moves, and before this gets worse. That ship will probably find itself in enemy territory pretty soon. _Everywhere_ is starting to be enemy territory.”

“We can’t just form Voltron and cleave it,” said Keith. “We’ll need to board it. See if we can find out if there are any more clone ships, and if his original arm’s in there somewhere. And how they’re transferring memories. We can’t just stop this ship. We have to be sure we take down the entire operation.”

“Do you want Lotor to know about this?” asked Allura, but nodded when the room-stare turned to her. “Of course not. Just being certain. I’ll tell him we need a few days to decide.”

“The universe isn’t going to stand still while you debate, princess,” said Sam Holt, sadly. “It won’t take long for the violence to escalate in many sectors.”

“Yeah,” Hunk agreed, rather unhappily. “But this is Shiro. If we don’t get him _now_ , we might not be able to find the ship again. We need him for this political stuff.”

Keith said nothing, because he agreed, although it felt like another tab on the pile of reasons he shouldn’t be where he was. Shiro had faith in him, and that was...great, honestly, it really was, especially after months of being certain Shiro thought him a failure. But that was still only Shiro, and the rest of the team had their own ideas. “Get some rest, and then get ready,” he told them. “Princess, tell Lotor we need a few days to assess the situation ourselves. We’ll take out the clone ship and get everything we can on this Operation Kuron. Hopefully, that’ll be enough to let Shiro come back to us.”


	10. Cleaning House

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's been a long time since I wrote anything quite this dark.

It was a rare day when one managed to be executed perfectly, but you still needed a plan to invade a Galra cruiser.

The plan part wasn’t what Keith worried about. The part Keith worried about was which of the paladins would fail to listen, or get distracted, or just decide their part sounded stupid and would do something else without saying anything, requiring everything to be re-thought-out on the fly. He didn’t honestly expect anything else to happen. He _had_ led the team before.

So far, so good?

Possibly the increasing sense of ‘war zone’ had a lot to do with it. Once the castleship had departed central command, and the area its weapons could easily reach, Sam Holt’s words started making a lot more sense. Cruiser against cruiser, fleet against fleet, clouds of fighters swarming around everything, it was impossible to tell with the naked eye who was firing at who, or why. Pidge applied color coded filters to the visuals (laughing gleefully about color coding) based on individual ship behavior and ident codes.

They didn’t want to interfere. Not yet. But the Holts were busily gathering a lot of data as the castleship tool large arcing routes around the battlefields.

They did stop twice, when the battling fleets had a planet caught between them. Only to stand guard over the planet itself, making sure the fleets kept their fights in space, against each other. It was difficult to say which side, if any, such attempts helped, but as a group they agreed they didn’t feel right about just passing those fights by.

And according to everything the Holts’ data gathering was telling them, it really _was_ getting worse. Quickly. It was as if an entire arena full of dogfight-trained hounds had escaped their cages at once. There might be organized ‘sides’ in the chaos, but mostly it was just carnage. Whole new ‘asteroid’ fields of battle debris were being formed by the hour.

“Are we sure ‘unlimited quintessence’ will calm this down?” asked Lance, as Allura guided the castleship above another debris field.

“I’m reading several small ships in that field,” said Pidge. “Scavengers, I’d guess. No rebel transponders active.”

“The rebels are staying clear,” said Matt firmly. “Getting in the middle of galra-on-galra warfare is nobody’s idea of a smart move.”

Allura said nothing, focusing on her navigation, but from her expression it seemed heartbreak warred with disappointment. The one cruiser they wanted was apparently steering clear of the engagements, drifting further out into open space where there was nothing to claim, nothing to get to.

“I’m not reading any fighters,” said Pidge, as the cruiser neared. “Some damage though.”

“Getting away,” said Keith quietly. “This one’s not part of the territorial wars. It just wanted to get clear. Good.”

Lance gave Keith a bit of side-eye. “You have a weird idea of ‘good’, man.”

“Means we don’t have to take out the fighters ourselves,” Keith pointed out. To Allura, he said, “We need to disable weapons and engines. Can’t let it jump out of here. I’ll take Lance, and we’ll draw fire and take out its defenses. It’ll want to get away; we can’t let it.”

Allura nodded, bringing the castleship’s weapons systems online for Hunk and Pidge to use. Lance got up to follow Keith. “Why me?”

 _Because the red lion is fastest_. No, that wasn’t the right thing to say, even if Red and Black _were_ the fastest lions and they needed to keep the cruiser occupied. But Keith wasn’t very good at lying. So he said, “Come on,” and left it at that.

Zipline to lion, and settling in, Keith patted the console even as it powered up. “It’s time to keep promises,” he told it. Did he imagine Black’s eagerness for that? An added enthusiasm, energy, as the Black Lion bounded out into space?

The cruiser saw them coming; they could see the ship powering up to defend itself, to run. “Head it off!” Keith ordered, and saw Red leap ahead, charging toward the cruiser’s bow. Keith focused Black’s tail laser on every turret and weapons port he could see as he closed the distance somewhat more slowly.

Lance had had time to get used to Red’s speed, sidestepping blast after blast and taking out the forward weapons ports with claw swipes. As the navigator seemed to shift focus from fighting to running, Keith landed Black on the cruiser’s upper hull, digging in the claws. “No, you _don’t_ ,” he growled, even as the castleship added a firmer punctuation with blasts to the cruiser’s engines.

Red settled primly on the top of the cruiser’s hull then, tail curled around its paws. Keith couldn’t shake the feeling Red was rather smug about its success. “Well. _That_ went well,” said Lance cheerfully.

“Time to board,” Keith agreed. “You and I are scouting ahead. Hunk, you’ll take rear. Allura, Pidge? Your job is to get every bit of information you can. Magical or database. We need to be sure we know everything about this project and that we haven’t left any pieces someone can use later.”

Perched as they were on the cruiser’s upper hull, it wasn’t hard for Lance and Keith to leave their lions and find their way inside. Before they started exploring, though, Keith put a hand on Lance’s arm. “One thing. If you see a druid, don’t close with it. Get under cover and use your rifle. They can sense you from a long way off, and they can teleport.”

Lance blinked. “That...sucks. What’re you going to do then?”

Keith drew his Marmora blade. “What I just told you not to do,” he said. “Hopefully I can keep its focus off you long enough for you to shoot it.”

“Figures,” Lance sighed. He set up a light beacon by the hatch they entered by, so the others would know where it was safe to enter. “So which way? Front or back?”

Good question. Keith had infiltrated a lot of cruisers, but not ones set up as laboratories. The Blade of Marmora was, on the whole, stretched too thin to lightly tangle with Haggar. “Front,” he decided, on the grounds that at the very least they could make sure the ship didn’t jump away if they got to the bridge.

Lance nodded, his bayard taking the form of a sniper rifle. He settled in to pick off nearby sentries while they waited for the others to catch up. Which they did, one by one coming down the marked hatch, nodding when they were ready.

When that meant everyone was, Keith tapped Lance on the shoulder, awoke his Marmora blade, and charged toward the bridge. Lance gave him a bit of a head start – enough for Keith to attract the attention of whatever might be past the doors – and followed, signaling the others to wait two minutes before doing the same.

At first, they just cleared sentries. Corridors, rooms that looked like meeting rooms, mess halls. A few had galra scientists in them, briefly. Some met more savage ends than others; Keith recognized a few faces from Shiro’s memory loops and not one of _those_ got past him, though it meant Lance gave him a few worried looks. Keith didn’t care. Pidge could pull their work from the computers; it was more important to be certain that those people never had the chance to hurt Shiro again.

The first druid they ran into cooled Keith’s temper considerably. Being held up by one’s throat can do that, even if it’s only for the few seconds required for Lance to line up a headshot. The druid seemed to evaporate, and Lance, approaching, nudged the mask and robes with his foot. “...Is it dead?”

Keith could only shrug. “Maybe? Probably won’t come back anyway. These,” and he swung the Marmora blade, “leave a body. But I don’t know why nothing else does.”

“I don’t like that they’re here,” said Lance quietly. “I hope Allura can undo whatever they’re here to be doing.”

Keith nodded, and gestured toward the forward door. Time to keep moving.

~*~

Pidge and Allura took their time following. They needed to, to make sure everything had been studied. Allura in particular looked ill, flinching back from any surprise.

“You okay?” asked Hunk from the aft door, his giant gun at the ready. “There something bad – I mean, magic-bad – going on?”

“Yes,” Allura nodded. “I don’t know what Keith thinks I can do about it, though. I’ve...I don’t think I’ve felt anything quite like this before. It’s ...it’s twisted.”

“Thaaat’s not good,” sighed Hunk. “We even going in the right direction?”

“I’m going to jump in with a ‘probably’,” said Pidge, scanning an interface with her gauntlet. “Hunk...they’re studying humans here.”

Hunk made a face. “That’s a plural, Pidge. But we’ve got everyone, unless they went back to Earth again.”

“Or they’ve made a lot of copies of Shiro,” said Allura softly.

Pidge set one of her hacking hemispheres on a console. “That seems counterproductive. I mean, they _know_ where Earth is. They could just scoop up hundreds, thousands. From what Lance told us, Earth’s a sitting duck.”

“I suspect they think Shiro is unusually exceptional for a human,” said Allura quietly, bayard at the ready. “It would upset them a lot to think a gladiatorial slave could hand them so many defeats and that there is a planet _full_ of such people. It’s...better for them to think of him as the best humanity can offer.”

Pidge flicked through readout after readout. “It’s kind of a crazy idea, but ...it looks like you’re probably right,” she conceded. “Probably didn’t hurt that the rest of us are also human. I mean, except you and Keith.” She frowned, then, scowling. “They’ve got blood samples of Dad’s in here too.”

“Good thing we’re already going to destroy everything here, right Pidge?” said Hunk pointedly.

That got a narrow-eyed look from Pidge. “Yep,” she agreed levelly.

Allura bent to study a body. “Not a sentry,” she said. “And...not a clean kill.” But a very thorough one. A blade had cut halfway through the neck, and most of the skull had been destroyed with a close-range headshot. This galra would not be brought back as any kind of monster. Keith wasn’t usually given to _over_ kill. But then, this place really didn’t feel right at all. Dark energies thrummed, sensed but not seen. Something really _bad_ was going on, somewhere here. Maybe everywhere here.

It didn’t surprise her when Lance’s voice came over the comm, _You three need to get up here. We’re about two rooms ahead and we need the backup. I hope you didn’t eat breakfast._

Pidge, Allura, and Hunk didn’t need to check with each other. They just answered the call, weapons ready.

~*~

Keith had, before now, thought he knew what rage was.

He’d decked Iverson, after all. He’d spent hours and hours fighting Blades in his Trials. He’d gone one on one with Zarkon. He’d spent hours in his shorts in an elevator shaft with a bitchy Lance trying to get to a pool that, when they finally got there, had presented the middle finger to gravity. He was no stranger to being angry.

One of the cruiser’s defense systems was a series of stasis pods triggered by motion sensors. Unusually canny, for galra defense systems. And worse when they were triggered.

As the contents awoke and emerged….they were all Shiro.

All _nightmare versions_ of Shiro.

More cybernetics. Different cybernetics. A few pumped up to giant size with quintessence infusions, raging. ‘Champion’, the galra had called him in the gladiatorial ring. But they couldn’t stop there. They had to _perfect_ their champion.

Keith raged through all of them, the black bayard-pistol firing whenever he had any kind of chance at hitting one of them, cutting off arms, legs, whatever his blade could reach with the other hand, _incandescently_ furious.

He had to be furious. Part of him knew it. Had to hang on hard to that anger, because if he didn’t his mind would register the roars, the screams, as _Shiro’s voice_ and he’d crack and then these monstrosities would kill him.

Lance was much less used to situations of a vomit-inducing nature. Green as an apple, he focused on limiting himself to what he could see through his rifle’s scope, tried hard not to notice things like facial features, and kept firing. Today was a day he knew he would be revisiting in nightmares for a long time to come. And he was never, ever going to tell Shiro about it.

By the time the other three caught up, the blood and wire and sprayed quintessence had made the trap into its own variation of hellscape, but enough of the nightmare Shiros were still fighting for all three to grasp immediately why their help had been called for. And they did help, though once the last nightmare had dropped, Pidge was very sick in a corner and Hunk looked like the only reason he wasn’t joining her was he didn’t want to inadvertently hit her.

It was therefore something of a surprise to all of them when Pidge got back up, wiped off her mouth, and grimly set about scanning the remains. “They kept them for a reason,” she said hoarsely. “They...might be prototypes.”

“This day just keeps getting better and better,” groaned Lance. “We all in agreement we never, _ever_ tell Shiro about this?”

“Absolutely,” said Keith, almost faintly. He was shaking, although no one could tell for certain what with. Shock, or fury, or both. It was really impossible to tell. “Nobody ever, ever tells Shiro about this. He doesn’t need that.”

Any thought of asking Keith if he was okay died in the throat as the others looked his way. They just nodded. His paladin armor was a lot redder than it usually was. Knowing that really, it was _all Shiro’s blood_ didn’t help anyone. Probably, Keith least of all. He seemed to notice their shock; he turned and continued the scout toward the forward end of the ship.

After a few deep breaths that suggested Lance was pondering nunvil, or possibly asking for a wormhole to a tequila bar and some help with a fake ID, Lance readied his rifle and followed.

Hunk took up a guard position and let Pidge and Allura ...do whatever they felt they needed to, among the carnage.

“Magic was used on some of these,” said Allura quietly. “I can...sort of sense the aftereffects. Half-robeast.”

“They’re not entirely all Shiro, either,” said Pidge. “Some of these have a bit of Dad’s DNA to them.” She had a sort of iron cast to her expression, trying to view the body parts and blood as just...data to be collected and understood. “Making a better Champion.”

At the back of the room, Hunk noisily lost his battle with nausea. “I dunno about you guys, but I didn’t know I could dislike galra _this much_.”

“Lotor did not know about this ship,” said Allura. “I’m sure of that.” But she didn’t look happy either. “There’s more magic ahead.”

Pidge straightened, swallowing hard. “Just as long as it’s not another room like this.”

~*~

They weren’t all like that first room.

But some were worse.

The staff – and Lance was no longer giving Keith any kind of worried look for how thoroughly Keith was removing them from the ranks of the living – were clearly using their handiwork to run experiments. How long without food, or water, resulted in shriveled and very recognizable corpses in little cells. How much salt the body could take in its water, what minerals were poison in what quantities. Some cells were empty, some had bodies still warm. Some, the worst, had bodies just alive enough to beg, reach hands out to clutch at mercy.

It was mercy. _It was mercy._ Keith knew that, somewhere. These clones had been created to a life of just...nothing but this. A single, clean shot, and the misery was over. Kinder than what seemed to be standard procedure here – to flush a dying body into space. But it was still _killing Shiro_ on some level and a part of him wanted to go back outside, turn off the comms, and spend a while screaming at the vacuum.

It had to be done. There weren’t anything like enough medical pods to save them, and what it would do to the real Shiro to see himself in this... _tortured multiplicity_...didn’t bear thinking about. Better himself than Shiro.

That didn’t make it easy, but it made it bearable. Better himself than Shiro. Keith had already seen Shiro’s nightmares. He could spare Shiro this one.

As they proceeded forward, though, circumstances changed. If the first set had been prototype champions, and the second were failures useful only as experimental subjects, now they were getting to clones in stages of near completion. Shiro but younger, whole, unscarred. Floating in cylinders of pale color, apparently asleep.

Lance asked, “Are they alive?” and from his tone, clearly hoped they weren’t.

The scientists tending them certainly weren’t anymore. Mass graves had been cleaner than this work. Keith was wondering vaguely if he was ever going to feel clean again. But he bent to study the readouts. “...I think they’re still growing?” he hazarded.

“Shiro-shaped geraniums?” Lance croaked. It seemed he was also having issues with life at the moment. “Maybe we just unplug them then?”

Keith nodded. That seemed best. They’d go quietly at least. No nightmares. It made it feel _marginally_ less like murder. But hell if he was going to make Lance do it. Jaw locking, he sliced his Marmora blade through the consoles of each capsule in turn, so that they powered down.

And forward, again. The ship had to run out of horrors sometime. There was only so much you could pack even onto a Galra cruiser.

~*~

Pidge and Allura gathered what they could from what was left in each room, Hunk bringing up the silent rear. No one said anything they didn’t have to. The bodies had that kind of effect. Pidge noted what had been tested, and to what degree. Downloaded everything from every console she came across. Earth would need to know.

They caught up at the final room. Here Lance and Keith were sitting, bloody and slumped in businesslike chairs, back to back and clearly both trying not to think. A few scientists had met their end, but the two paladins had tugged the bodies off to one wall.

The room was small, but clearly important. A single human arm floated in a reinforced capsule, near a steel rack of tubes. The rest of the room was computer.

Keith got up as Pidge, Allura, and Hunk entered, shouldering his blade. “...I’ll go back to the hatch and clear the aft,” he said.

“No,” said Hunk firmly, putting his hand on Keith’s bloody shoulder. “I’ve taken the rear this whole time, nothing’s come from that end. This place is screwed up enough for a billion of us. Pidge, is that the real stuff?”

“Yeah,” said Pidge hoarsely, scanning it with her gauntlet. “Dad’s blood. Shiro’s arm. This is where they got the raw materials. I’ll just get the data.”

Allura approached the arm in its canister. “This is more than just ‘raw materials’,” she said. “There’s magic on this. I can feel it.”

Keith turned to face her. “Can you break it? The magic?”

This close, Allura could tell the evening’s work had taken a toll on Keith. He was holding himself together out of sheer survival habit, but that could snap. “I will,” she said. She wasn’t actually that certain, but she didn’t think Keith could handle a lot more uncertainty.

It was easier when she closed her eyes. Shut out the tap tap of Pidge’s hacking. There _was_ something bound to this severed arm. Not just keeping it alive, but using it as a bridge. The part, connecting to the whole. A long, long line, connecting every horrible thing here to the source. To Shiro.

 _That_ made her shiver; that was just cruel. But Shiro would never countenance what these echos had been or done. She could draw on him, on his energy, and use it to drive out the magic she sensed. She did so, adding her own energy to help him.

It wasn’t easy, but between the two of them, they banished or broke the dark energy around it. When Allura opened her eyes, everyone else looked a bit dazed, or possibly blinded. “I think that did it?”

“You’re...um. That was very...awesome,” said Lance awkwardly. “Great job.”

“Do we have everything now?” asked Keith quietly, not looking at any of them.

“Yeah,” said Pidge. “I’ve sent everything recovered here to the castleship’s databanks to go over it. We’ve got the originals. We’ll know by tomorrow if there are any more ships like this. We can go.”

“Then let’s go,” said Keith, still in that very quiet, distant tone. “Wanna use the giant gun on this mess, Hunk?”

“My _pleasure_ ,” said Hunk firmly.

They took the arm with them. And the blood, just in case some salvager came out this way. The reverse of the way they’d come in; Hunk out first, Keith out last.

Keith was distantly surprised Black accepted him at the controls still; he _felt_ ...defiled. But maybe Black knew wrath too. Voltron was formed just long enough to blow the cruiser and its contents into space dust. Unsalvagable. Then they returned to the castleship.

Keith stayed at Black’s controls for a few moments after the Lion settled back into its berth. He felt made of ...shit and lead, honestly, unclean and too heavy to move. It seemed rude to stay and not address the Lion, though, so he said, “I hope we finished it. I’ve done all I can here.” Maybe a bit more than that, even. But he was _not_ going to be sick in the cockpit. He pushed himself to his feet, wondered how his feet weren’t clomping as he walked to the hatch.

A sound behind him made him turn. Not the buzz of consoles. Softer. Human. Sitting in the pilot’s seat.

 _Shiro_.


	11. Flipside

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> You've got to stop dying, Shiro.

It took Shiro a while to understand the extent of the problem.

First, he started following the black lines. This was a bit of an issue because they all _ended_ at his feet, and got thicker as they neared their endpoints. Of course, in some cases this meant he was near enough to then follow his eyes or ears.

He’d never much liked the druids. Or the empire in general. He _knew_ they were brutal, and cruel, he’d survived quite a lot he’d never intended any of the paladins to know about. It was just...worse, he supposed, that it turned out there were new depths to find out about himself.

The memories were always the darkest ones. The ties that bound him to these others were the worst things he’d ever lived through, the things that kept him awake in uniform doing pushups in his quarters until he was too exhausted to dream.

If a man was the sum of his memories, why fixate on just the worst ones? Was that all the magic could reach, or was it a choice at some level to take only those? It was difficult to decide, based on what he could discover. The magic was certainly not kind stuff, but at the same time, to have suffered the empire’s cruelty was something Black could understand and it might be a reason these others were _here_ , in Black’s shadow. Shiro honestly didn’t know. Black magic was more than a little outside his field.

He’d asked Keith to trust him to solve this. There had to _be_ a solution. Of course there did. One thumb absently rubbed against a bead of the mala. He unlooped it from his wrist. Of all the things for Keith to bring…

It made sense of a sort. Keith was about as meditative as a hyperactive puppy, and when he _did_ lapse into introspection the results were often not particularly productive. He’d never gotten the hang of meditation and never saw any use in prayer, so those things had apparently gotten permanently filed under ‘things Shiro did that Keith didn’t understand’. And Keith tended to worry at things he didn’t understand.

Maybe, this time, it had been the right thing to do. This was the Black Lion’s place, and ultimately, it was a realm of mind and will.

Shiro couldn’t cut the black threads. But maybe, if they connected, Black _could_.

The Black Lion, Keith said, was somewhere on the other side of this field of souls. For sanity’s sake, Shiro wasn’t going to call them clones or copies. There was only one _self_. Stick to that. (Although part of him noted that, for the record, it was a damn good thing his grandfather wasn’t around or the spiritual debate could have lasted for _months_.)

Shiro fingered the mala. No time like the present, whenever that turned out to be.

 _Strength. Trust. Connection._ Deep breaths.

Strength of will. To survive whatever was thrown at you, to get back up no matter how hard you were hit.

Trust in the Lions. No one could – or should – command them.

Connect. The bond was still there. Use it to find the path. Shiro closed his eyes, shut out the distractions. Counted a bead, took a step.

_Strength. Trust. Connection._

Count a bead. Take a step. Shut out _everything_ else. They might be real but they didn’t matter. The string in his hand mattered, the connection to Black mattered. Those were the path home and he didn’t need eyes or ears to find it.

He was more than the worst the empire had done to him. He _chose_ to be more. The reality of that choice was more than could be conveyed in a motivational speech or poster. It was rebuilding the self day by day, sometimes minute by minute. Whatever was chiseled away, to build anew in its place.

_Strength. Trust. Connection._

To open the self knowing exactly how much rejection would hurt, exactly how much betrayal would hurt. Rely on the lion. Trust the lion. This was its own territory. It _could_ choose, if given the chance to choose. The connection was clearer now, stronger now. The steps came more easily, the path more certain.

Shiro opened his eyes when that sense of connection seemed all around, without directionality. He stood between the Black Lion’s paws, and all around them both were only stars.

He smiled; Black purred.

Shiro patted the giant claw that was nearest his human hand. “Time to go home.”

~*~

Everyone reacted differently on getting back. Hunk headed for his quarters for a shower and change, and then to the kitchen for stress baking.

Pidge held together long enough to set a few programs running – enough to make sure anything important in the recovered data was brought to her attention – and then, for the first time in years, had a sobbing fit hard enough that her father and brother attached themselves to her like very protective glue. Lance turned ‘take a shower’ into a private spa day retreat, with a long soak becoming a facial, mani-pedi, and massage. Allura cleaned up and then spent hours discussing the day’s work with Coran – whether anything like this had been done before, were there better options, what to _do_ about it when things like this existed.

Keith fled the Black Lion as if it might hunt him, or he were some kind of living bomb that might damage it. He locked himself in his quarters and spent his time cleaning every bit of gore from the red paladin’s armor.

He did not stay to greet Shiro. That would have meant Shiro saw him covered in blood and gore, and he didn’t have it in him to face Shiro’s expression. At that particular moment he’d have needed ten minutes of preparation, _after_ a shower, just to face a _mirror_.

And so it was that when Shiro opened his eyes, seated in Black’s cockpit almost exactly as he’d been who-knew-how-long-ago, he found himself alone.

There was blood drying on the control grips, and there was blood smeared on the pilot’s seat when he stood up. Not enough to suggest Keith had been injured; more than enough to state definitively that close quarters combat had been recent. And Keith tended to be meticulous about his gear, a habit ingrained by years of ‘if it breaks there’s no replacing it’. If he’d been in any kind of normal frame of mind, he’d have cleaned this up before leaving the Lion.

Shiro took care of it himself, because it needed to be done and doing it gave him time to think. The consoles remained lit and active; Black was welcoming him home, in its way. When he finished, Black’s head lowered to let him out.

Where to now? Weirdly enough Shiro felt pretty good. Liberated, even. Not that the astral plane had been a prison, but he’d spent who knew how long trapped in his own worst memories, and now that was over. In every sense of the word; he didn’t feel _trapped_ by them anymore. It was like entering a whole new life. He’d never be the man he’d been piloting for the Kerberos mission, but that didn’t mean his future was dark.

Shiro’s feet had, possibly on autopilot, set off for his quarters. The smell of food – not food goo, _food_ , actual Earth food – wafted down the halls and caused his stomach to submit a course correction. He followed the scent instead, eventually poking his head into the galley, where Hunk was apparently cooking for ten. “Hey,” he offered.

He wasn’t expecting Hunk to startle so badly he _almost_ dropped a tray of...okay, not sure what those were, sort of tiny greenish nacho bowls maybe, but Hunk had to be a lot more than startled before he’d drop his cooking on the floor. The tray got set on a counter to cool, and to Shiro’s surprise Hunk grabbed a yellow gauntlet from said counter to scan him with. And only _then_ did the big man smile and open his arms for a hug. “Shiro,” he greeted happily, if a bit tiredly. “So it worked! _Good_ to see you. You’re looking good. Not translucent or anything. You hungry? What am I saying, of course you’re hungry, am I right?” One of the little greenish-stuffed nacho bowls was scooped up and offered. “Might be a little too hot.”

Shiro was still in his uniform and the gauntlets could handle a lot of heat, so he accepted the little bowl and blew on it lightly. “Thanks. Um. What’s with the scanning?”

“Oh. Just making sure a clone didn’t sneak on board while we were busy,” said Hunk. “Pidge worked out how to scan for it but we haven’t yet built it into the security systems.”

Shiro blinked. Keith had glossed over a lot, it seemed, for Hunk to treat it so casually. “There were a lot of them then?” he asked, taking a tentative bite. Hunk could take random flora they didn’t even know the _name_ of and turn it into food that could win competitions. “This is _really_ good, by the way.”

Hunk grinned at the compliment. “I knew you were a man of taste. Hang on, there’s a drink I wanted to pair with it.” He held up a finger, then dove into what looked like identital polished cabinets until he came out with a packet of liquid, which he passed over. It was sort of purple-ish, like watered down grape juice possibly. Shiro obediently opened it to sample some, and wasn’t surprised that Hunk’s instincts were correct. Tart, but it did pair well with the little nacho thing. “Very nice. Where’s everyone else?”

Hunk shrugged. “Decompressing,” he guessed, smile fading. “Thought maybe baking might bring one or two out, but I guess I’m not surprised it’s just you. It was a rough mission.” He added, as if it were an afterthought he wasn’t actually sure of, “I’m sure seeing you will help though.”

Shiro’s eyes narrowed. Hunk was typically highly conflict-avoidant. And he was giving off the signs of there having been a really _big_ conflict. Right down to stress baking.

But because he _was_ conflict-avoidant, the worst possible way to get him to talk was to dive right in. So Shiro settled into a seat, sampled the nacho things and everything else Hunk chose to bake, tested the drink pairings, and waited for Hunk’s own internal need to get things off his chest to handle it for him.

An hour later, he was _full_ , and also had at least a working idea of what had happened. Promising to send everyone he ran into Hunk’s way for dinner, he was glad to walk some of it off. The heart, rather than the head, chose his next stop.

Pidge’s quarters were now holding three, and Shiro was surprised – and delighted – when Sam answered the door. And then further surprised to be scanned (again) before being tugged inside for a small Kerberos crew reunion.

“You look great,” said Matt happily. “I’m glad it’s really you.”

Shiro gave Matt a relieved hug, and another for his father. “Same here,” he said. “I haven’t seen either of you since Kerberos. It’s good to know you’re both okay – and did you _grow_ , Matt?”

“Yeah,” Matt grinned. “Food goo isn’t the most awesome stuff to have every day for months, but it seems to grow a healthy everything.”

Sam seemed in good health too, much to Shiro’s relief. “A prison colony for scientific minds,” he said. “Lotor seems to understand that innovation can come from any source.” There was a quiet warning in that, but Sam wasn’t about to ruin the mood over it.

“Where’s Pidge?” asked Shiro.

“Sleeping,” said Matt quietly. “I haven’t seen her cry like that since the time one of the school bullies took a clipper to her hair. And she was _five_.”

“ _Cry?_ ” Shiro echoed, concerned. Matt was right. That wasn’t something Pidge normally did. He paired this what what Hunk had told him and didn’t like the results he was getting.

Sam nodded toward a console, the screen scrolling madly. “She got that going first.”

“What can you tell me?” asked Shiro solemnly.

The Holts were if anything less informative than Hunk had been, but not out of choice. They’d stayed behind, making sure the clone ship didn’t jump away. And apparently nobody had been particularly talkative. Neither Matt nor Sam were happy about it. Something had made their Katie _cry_.

“Do you think I should come back later?” asked Shiro. “Would it help her if I said hello...or thanks?”

Matt shook his head. “I love her but she’s not the most alert when you first wake her up,” he said. “Given it was a clone ship...she should probably be awake to properly process you being back. We’ll tell her though.”

Logical, reasonable, protective. Shiro clasped Matt’s shoulder and got a smile in response. “Thanks,” he said. “Hunk’s cooking is really on form tonight by the way. He made me promise to spread the word, and you two look like you could use a bite. Bring some back for Pidge.”

“I’ll go,” Sam nodded. “Matt can stay here. We won’t be leaving her alone until we’re certain she’ll be fine.”

“I want to spend more time catching up,” said Shiro, “but it’s looking like I need to put together what just happened, first. I’ll come back later. When Pidge is feeling better.”

Matt agreed, and Sam nodded as he left to track down Hunk’s cooking. Shiro stepped outside and considered his options. Allura, then. Maybe the Altean perspective would be more enlightening.

Allura was in one of the common areas, with Coran. Neither looked particularly upset, and neither looked particularly happy. Shiro waved to them, and wasn’t surprised to be scanned yet again.

“Can’t be too sure, you know,” Coran offered. “Apologies for the rudeness, though.”

“Hunk’s making very good food, by the way,” Shiro offered. “If you two feel like adjourning at all for that.”

“Maybe soon,” said Allura, giving Shiro a light hug. “It’s good that you are back. _Really_ back. There’s just _so much_ to go over.”

“I was honestly hoping you’d say that,” said Shiro. “Can we possibly start with today and work backward?”

“Um,” said Allura. “...Keith did specifically say _not_ to discuss today with you,” she said apologetically.

Shiro blinked. He could probably pull rank and Allura would tell him. She hadn’t used her ‘lips are sealed’ tone. She was informing him that an order had been given, not refusing to speak as such. But if he _did_ that, if he pulled rank on Keith in that way without telling him or talking with him…

Well. He knew Keith. It would do a lot more harm than good to undercut him that way.

He could wait. He fully intended to talk to Keith directly anyway. He’d just do that next. He nodded to Allura. “All right. What _can_ you tell me?”

Allura smiled, relieved to not have to choose. And she had a _lot_ to say. Much of it dovetailed fairly well with what Keith had told him – though she had a much clearer and more understandable version of the whole icecapades part of the story. And some things were new.

“Six months?” Shiro blinked.

Allura nodded. “Every day. He ...didn’t really stop looking for you until we found – well, until we found what turned out to be Takashi. And you had only ever told _him_ you wanted him to lead…?”

“In my defense I had no idea it was going to come up that soon?” said Shiro, but a bit sheepishly. “I wanted a plan in place, but I thought I’d have more time.”

“Possibly next time tell everyone?” smiled Allura. “It would have saved ... _some_ pain, I think. He wasn’t believed until Black accepted him. But he really...wasn’t ready, Shiro.” She said it carefully, gently...sadly.

Coran nodded. “You should’ve let him grieve, lad. If Allura were to tell you she wanted me to pilot the Blue Lion if she were to -” he stopped, shook his head. “You’d _know better_ , wouldn’t you? I’d certainly hope you would. If you asked me to do it for the universe’s sake, of course I would, but you’d _know better_ , I hope.”

That put it in an interesting perspective. Coran was of course _devoted_ to Allura. And he was right; Shiro _would_ know better than to ask Coran to do anything like that if something happened to Allura. Coran would be devastated. And maybe having something to do would help that grief, but not something as critical as flying a Lion.

Keith had taken it _that hard_? “...He never said,” said Shiro quietly. But of course he wouldn’t, would he. Something that hit that hard, Keith never had the vocabulary for things like that.

Coran was giving him a very ...piercing look. It was a bit disconcerting. “Do you know, when I confronted the boy about that dive at Naxzela, what he compared it to?” he asked. “He asked if I would send this ship into a dive like that if it would save the Princess.”

Shiro just nodded. Coran was handing him some very specific pieces to the mess, and Allura was too. In their oblique, Altean way.

“Not that he hasn’t got potential,” said Allura gently. “I think he may be a fine black paladin someday. He’s very careful, most of the time.” _We’re not blaming you,_ she meant. Shiro wasn’t sure if that was wise, under the circumstances. Kind, certainly. But maybe not wise. And he had to wonder what she meant by ‘careful’, because it wasn’t usually a word people used to describe Keith.

Maybe it was something they _could_ answer. Couldn’t hurt. “Careful?” he echoed.

“Since coming back, yes,” Allura nodded. “Very restrained, most of the time.” She thought about it. “Like...we might break if he raises his voice.”

Oh. Shiro closed his eyes a moment. _That_ attitude. Did no one on this ship understand Keith at _all_? It wasn’t that hard, it really wasn’t.

Allura and Coran were blinking at him with confused expressions. They could tell they’d said something important, but not what.

Well. They were right about one thing. A lot of things. He’d done _nowhere near_ the preparation he really needed to have done if Keith were ever going to succeed him, and now...well, it might be too late for that, but he could at least start undoing the damage he’d caused, however well-intentioned. He was going to _fix. This._

“Keith spent ...a while, growing up, on his own,” said Shiro slowly. “Without a family, I mean. On Earth, if you lose your family, you get...kind of bounced around a lot. Sent to homes that will take you, for however long they’ll take you. It’s a gamble, a lot of the time. Some homes have a _lot_ of kids, so there’s not a lot of space for you, or time for you. Some homes, the parents are in it for the checks they receive to care for you. Some homes are...” he paused. He honestly wasn’t sure what it would do to the Alteans to get a rundown of the predatory homes who signed on for foster children to have new playthings. He settled for, “worse. Keith’s tough. But you’ve noticed he’s got a temper. If you _watch_ for it, you can get him to tell you what’s bothering him before it’s too big for him to handle, but most foster homes didn’t know to watch for it. And he didn’t want to be bounced around too much so he’d try to get along, so he wouldn’t argue and he’d try not to fight.”

Coran just stared. “But...he’s _galra_ ,” he breathed, horrified. “Didn’t anyone ever tell your Earth people how to deal with galra children? You can’t _do_ that. They’re very emotional.”

“Coran, _he_ didn’t know he’s galra,” Shiro reminded him. “He was absolutely shocked to find out. His parents were gone. Who was there to warn _anyone_? So...sooner or later he’d explode. People got hurt sometimes, and he’d get bounced somewhere else. What you’re telling me he’s been doing since he got back is him trying to _behave_ , Coran. That really-careful background attitude is him trying to avoid doing anything that gets him sent away.”

Allura wasn’t handling the concepts any more happily than Coran; she looked on the verge of tears. They didn’t affect her voice, though. “We wouldn’t do that. We sent Lance to bring him back. Why would we send him away again?”

“Because that’s the expected result, princess,” said Coran, thinking it out. “I think I understand it now. Why he left before. Takashi didn’t like how he was leading...he must have decided it was better to go before he was sent.” He looked to Shiro. “Right?”

Shiro just nodded. Part of this felt like a horrible violation of Keith’s privacy. And in a way it really was. But this had gone on too long, and had absolutely gone too far. Something had _broken_ the team today, and if they were going to heal then they needed to understand what had happened and why, before the only conclusion they reached was the one Keith was probably _already at_ , which was that Keith did not belong and needed to go.

Shiro didn’t need the details of what had happened on the clone ship. He had enough pieces to put together the shape of it. Now the rest of the team needed enough pieces to make sure this never happened again. He knew Keith didn’t have the words – Keith had never _had_ the words. But he wasn’t hard to read, if you knew how. These were good people. They _wanted_ to understand. Shiro just needed to provide them the tools.

“So...now that you are back,” said Allura slowly. “What do you want to do? There’s still a very large civil war out there.”

“And you want to study Lotor,” said Shiro. “I agree, we’re going to need to choose a side or the civil war could take half the universe with it. But...would you be willing to let go of Blue, to do that?”

Allura seemed surprised. “Why?”

“Because the Coalition is an entity distinct from Voltron itself,” said Shiro. “That’s one reason. You want to study Lotor, but if you’re the one to do it then any alliance nets Lotor _both_ the coalition _and_ Voltron. That’s a lot to hang on an agreement with someone we don’t know very well. Even if I take back leadership of the Paladins, as long as you’re flying Blue, with you Lotor effectively does get both.”

“I see,” Allura nodded. “...I’d like to think about it. Flying the Blue Lion has meant a lot to me. But peace means a lot to me as well.”

“Take your time,” said Shiro dryly. “We’ve no shortage of fires to put out here at home, it seems.” He got up. “You two should probably go talk to Hunk. Get some food, fill him in on what I’ve told you.”

This time it was Coran who nodded. “Agreed,” he said. “We’ll get things underway. Where will you be?”

“Well, Pidge is asleep,” said Shiro. “I’d better hear Lance out before I confront Keith. Only fair.” He looked toward the two Alteans. “Look...Keith may be hard to get to know, but I know how. Come to me if you – _either_ of you – need help. You’re right. I should’ve prepared more. I’m going to make up for that.”

Shiro thought about that – about preparing more, about what he was seeing, and hearing, and what people _weren’t_ saying – as he made his way to Lance’s door. As much as he probably would’ve loved a welcoming group hug, maybe this was better. Seeing each one of the team individually...they’d changed _so much_. Strictly chronologically speaking, he hadn’t really been gone that long, but everyone seemed...older.

It was almost a relief when he knocked on Lance’s door and was greeted with a lime green facial mask and – they probably weren’t actually cucumbers, but Lance was the guy who’d find something close. He held up a hand in a moisturizing glove. “One mo.”

Shiro had a feeling he knew what was next, and wasn’t surprised that once again, he was scanned _before_ being given a relieved smile. “All _right_ ,” said Lance quietly, but definitely happily, and opened the door wide. “C’mon in then. When did you get in?”

Beyond the wires and circuitry required to run a retro Earth gaming console on possibly much _more_ retro Altean space tech, Lance’s room could double as a beauty salon for one. Lance had clearly been at it all evening, as there were little pots and jars and sponges all over the place – neat, yes, but all over the place – so Shiro sat down with some trepidation on the bed since he could at least be certain what was on it. “...A few hours. I’ve been catching up with everyone, at least as much as they’re willing to tell me.”

Lance had always been a gossip, before. And certainly not much of a friend to Keith. So Shiro was more than a bit surprised that Lance gave him a very level, measuring look from behind that lime green facial, and said simply, “Keith said not to.”

 _That_ was a change. And unlike most of the changes he’d seen this evening, one he wasn’t sure how to measure, place. From his tone, Lance _agreed_ with the order, and that was a whole different surprise. Maybe...just possibly...not _everything_ about the team was broken. “All right,” he agreed quietly. “What _can_ you tell me?”

Lance absently got on with his personal care regime while he thought it over. “He said he told you what’s been happening here, but there’s a lot he wouldn’t know because _he_ wasn’t here either. You’ve talked to the others, so. What do you want to know?”

 _I want to know why Pidge cried herself to sleep tonight. I want to know why Keith didn’t clean blood from Black’s cockpit._ But that was just today. “You’re in Red now, I’m told,” he tried carefully. “So you were...Takashi, was it? Takashi’s second. Tell me about that.” He’d have to meet this clone sometime. Giving the man his own first name would definitely be a priority.

“He wasn’t...isn’t...you,” said Lance quietly. “But at first we really wanted him to be, you know? Keith probably most of all. We wanted you not to be gone. Wanted to think ...maybe we’d saved you. He had command the minute he was well enough to walk onto the bridge, even if it took longer for Black to decide he was all right. And...maybe we should’ve seen something was wrong, then?” He shrugged. “Honestly I thought if anyone was going to object it’d be Keith, you know. But he was willing to hand the reins right back. And maybe that not being enough was another sign, I don’t know.” Lance should’ve seemed ridiculous, in his fluffy robe and lime green facial, speaking so seriously. He didn’t. This was where, and how, he was comfortable. Facial or no, there were no real masks here. “I thought... _we_ thought...you were just tense, you know? You’ve never exactly been the reserved kind, giving orders from the back. Having to tell Keith what to do had to be frustrating. And then he started just... _not being there_. Going off with the Blades on missions. Nearly got us all killed once over a convoy.”

Lance paused there for a moment. “We had to hear from Kolivan that he was late because he’d gotten _blown up_ , by the way. Like, the ship he’d been on got blown up and he’d been freefloating in the wreckage without a jetpack. Of course we’d just nearly gotten eaten by a swarm of fighters and a few cruisers trying to protect a convoy, so none of us were all that keen on listening right then. Takashi saved us, taking over Black that day, and that was that, really. Like that was all Keith’d been waiting on. Gave Black back to Takashi with his blessing and he left. And we let him go.”

Shiro listened attentively, while Lance gave himself a manicure and spoke, and understood this was a kind of test as well as a kind of confession. Very, _very_ obliquely, which was unusually subtle for Lance, Shiro was being asked, _was this a sign we should have seen?_ And all he could say was, “If you’re asking...I’d have been having a talk with Kolivan at that point.” The clone didn’t seem to have all his memories. Or at least, not very clearly. _Shiro_ knew the signs of Keith having problems. Apparently, nobody else did. Keith couldn’t handle micromanaging. You either trusted him or you didn’t. Apparently, Takashi didn’t. Apparently, at that point, _no one_ had. Or had it been laid out as a choice?

Lance nodded, accepting that, and blew on his fingernails. “Yeah well. For a while it was interesting. Pidge took off for a few weeks to go find Matt while the rest of us worked on Olkarion. And there was the Voltron Show.” He grinned as much as the drying facial mask allowed for. “That was, I have to say, _the_ most fun I’ve had in this place. And Takashi wasn’t thrilled, you know. Kept having to wear skin tight shirts and everything, but the ladies loved it.”

Okay. Shiro wasn’t entirely sure he needed to know _that_. But he kept his mouth shut.

“But...” and Lance had to think hard about the words he chose, then. “...Takashi’s not you,” he repeated. “Not so big on hugs, much more commander than...one of us, you know? And gradually he just...shut us out. One by one. He’d talk with Kolivan or the rebel commanders and just...forget to tell us. After a while we just stopped asking. It was all really gradual. And then the blitz started and we were on call so much nobody got any sleep. If you want to know who first hit on the idea of testing Takashi to see if maybe something was _wrong_ , we kind of all did about the same time. Pidge hit on what to do about it, though, and since Red’s fastest...I went to go get Keith. You’ve probably got everything from there.”

“So...what was it you all thought?” asked Shiro. Trying not to be hurt, honestly, that they would think that was okay. But – gradual change could make a lot of things all right by small increments, with enough time.

“Well, I can tell you ‘clone’ was _not_ the first thing on our minds,” said Lance dryly. “We thought maybe something had been done to you while you were a captive. The Galra had done that before. Maybe some kind of mind magic, or something. Like I said, Pidge is the one that came up with a way to test. She told us what she needed, and I went and got Keith because he was the only one that had a hope of finding what she’d asked for.”

And things had, apparently, snowballed from there, Keith taking back Black and resuming his searching. In and around the Empire apparently breaking into a million pieces, which only Allura seemed to realize was in fact a Big Deal. As Lance cleaned the mask off his face, Shiro said, “I’m going to talk to Keith. Is there anything I should know before I do?”

It took a few moments. Possibly Lance needed to think it out, or possibly the delay was entirely due to scrubbing off the facial mask. “Yeah. Don’t let him leave.”

Shiro blinked. “What?”

Lance looked a _lot_ more serious without the facial hiding half his expression. “Don’t let him leave. Today was a _bad_ day, Shiro. Last I saw him he looked like ...like something not human. When they trap street dogs to take them to the pound and they’re growling and snapping and biting. Like that. And I don’t know what to do about it which is why I’m not going anywhere near him right now. And I was the one that went and got him before this mess started so I’ve seen the other side of that. If you let him leave he’s probably not going to come back here on his own two feet, and he might not come back at all.”

Shiro was aware his jaw had dropped. He closed his mouth. Such a speech, and from _Lance_ of all people, Lance who he’d had to order to stand down because he was just _that keen_ on getting a place in the sun, that sure Keith was in his way. And it wasn’t...love. Somewhere, at some point, Lance had made some kind of judgment call of what Keith did and did not deserve, and ‘dying alone’ was simply not on the list. It might be friendship, or something else, someday. For now it was just a very clear decision that something had gone overboard and needed to be corrected.

“I’ll remember,” he said to that. “But in the meantime, how are _you_? You said today was bad.”

“And I’m not kidding about that either,” said Lance. “If he’ll talk to you about it great. Then you and me can talk about it _later_. For now, I’ll settle for being glad I don’t have to patrol the launch bays to keep him from sneaking off, and get my pedicure in. And some sleep.”

“Hunk’s made some really good stuff in the galley, too,” said Shiro, thinking he might as well be complete on that front. And maybe Lance and Allura could put their heads together usefully. Lance had _grown_. It was one of the few bits of good news he’d picked up.

Lance nodded. “Yeah, that’s probably a good idea too.” He put his hands on Shiro’s arms, studying him. “...I really am glad you’re back, you know,” he said. “Best thing to happen today.”

He gave Shiro a tight hug that said very clearly he really _was_ happy, and relieved, to have Shiro back, and then let Shiro go. “Go on. You’re gonna need to be awake to deal with crazypants.”

“Thanks...I think,” said Shiro, and took the hint. Once the door had closed behind him, he headed back to his own quarters to think first.

 _Maybe_ it wasn’t all entirely broken.

Clearly, whatever Keith had set in motion that let him come back, had had a high cost. But the team, while it had taken a hard hit, and might need time and attention to get together again, could still mend. Shiro didn’t really think Takashi had much to do with that – not on purpose, anyway. Rather, as the clone had withdrawn, the others had grown to fill in the space. They understood each other much better than Shiro remembered them doing. Lance, Hunk and Allura at least were definitely stronger, and Pidge’s problem solving skills had clearly grown as well. They’d brought Keith back...because they had to, apparently. And they’d had enough problems of their own that they didn’t check up on him, and none of them had really had much handle on how to read him in the first place. So ...they’d ultimately traded one distant commander for another, and hadn’t really questioned it because that was, apparently, normal now. Normal enough that going to each of them just to make sure they were all right was a _welcome surprise_. Not asserting command just because he could was a _welcome surprise_. They were all happy to see him, but it wasn’t just greeting a lost friend.

Someday he was going to have to meet this clone. How had the man gotten so much so wrong? (No. He knew the answer to that. He did. He just...that was going to be a long meditation for another day.)

In the meantime, something had gone badly today. It had gone badly enough to make Pidge cry, make Lance serious, and push Keith to and perhaps over some very bad edges. Everyone else was in as good a place as they could be for now.

Right, then.

Shiro got up, left his room, down the hall to Keith’s door. Setting a hand to it before knocking, he felt a faint vibration. _Damn._ The quarters were all soundproofed. The door vibrated to rhythm – Keith had music on, very _loud_ music, and Shiro realized that he’d never asked if Keith brought back anything from Earth for himself.

That rather let out knocking. Shiro tried the handle, found it locked. _Better and better_. Lance’s assessment of something caged and feral was probably closer to right than he knew. Keith only bothered with loud music when what he was trying to drown out was the inside of his head.

How to get _in_ though? He could use his metal hand, but that would ruin the door and felt like overkill. There had to be a lock override. Maybe -

He was still wearing his paladin armor. The black paladin’s gauntlet probably _did_ have a master key. He only had one on, but that should be enough. He set the gauntlet on the lockplate.

 _Goddamnthatwasloud._ The door opened and Shiro staggered back from what felt like a solid _wall_ of sound roaring out. And then it just cut off. Keith had turned the music off. He stood in his doorway, wearing just shorts, still visibly spattered with blood in many places, his hair matted with it. And Lance was right; the stare was almost feral. A wounded beast waiting to see if it was in danger, or if it had been presented with dinner.

Thankfully, it wasn’t the first time. He knew what to do with this. Shiro stayed put, kept his hands where Keith could see them. Think about...flowers. Spring breezes. The important thing was to show only calm.

He wasn’t surprised that out of all of them, Keith was the only one that didn’t reach for a gauntlet to scan him. He just watched with that feral stare, as seconds became minutes. And then turned away, retreating back into his room, but leaving the door open behind him. As much invitation as there was going to be. Under the circumstances, it might even count as a plea.

Shiro answered it, following Keith inside, closing the door again behind him. The room was for the most part bare, and absolutely neat. It had less to do with a sense of order and more to do with Keith not actually owning much. The work of the evening wasn’t hard to spot. The red paladin armor was laid out on the bed and the floor. The pieces on the bed were spotless, gleaming. The pieces on the floor...not so much. This was where the blood in the cockpit had come from, clearly.

Keith followed his gaze. “...I’ll get to cleaning the cockpit when I’m done with this,” he said tonelessly.

Shiro found an unoccupied corner of floor and sat down; it tended to help in these cases to _not_ be looking down at Keith. “No need,” he said, keeping his tone pleasant.

That got a frustrated growl and a wary stare. It took Keith a few seconds to parse that he wasn’t being faulted or blamed. Shiro wasn’t surprised to see that it confused him.

This was where Shiro had always helped. Keith could fight, _did_ fight, better than nearly anyone Shiro had met. But that kind of skill came with a price. It wasn’t just Keith’s galra blood. Keith craved connection, belonging, and hadn’t the slightest clue how to make connections or be part of a group. You needed to grow up with connections to understand them, and Keith hadn’t. Left to himself they would always fade like mist, and he’d be alone without knowing quite why, or how to change it. He had a long and occasionally contradictory list of things he’d been yelled at for doing down the years and no idea what the common theme was. _I thought if they just spent time around you they’d see how to do it, the way I did, and I never thought maybe I should teach it. Just that you’d feel so exposed if I did – but better that, and learning you can survive it, than what I_ did _do, that let you drift out to the edges again. Where you_ hate _being._

Without Shiro saying anything, Keith eventually sat down and resumed cleaning the paladin armor. He was meticulous about it, getting into every joint and fiber. Avoiding Shiro.

“What is it you’re ashamed of?” asked Shiro carefully.

“...I broke them,” said Keith tonelessly, without looking up from his work. “You told me to take care of them and I broke them.”

 _Broke yourself, more accurately._ “They’re going to be okay,” said Shiro. “I’ve been talking to them. Hunk’s baking, Lance seems to have discovered galactic cucumbers, Allura’s doing some strategic planning, Pidge is sleeping and Matt and Sam are watching her. They’re all going to be okay.”

Keith’s lip curled briefly, and Shiro realized the familiar gesture really did look a lot like a galra fang display. Keith didn’t have fangs, though. In a ‘don’t lie to me’ tone, he said, “Hunk is _stress baking_ , Lance does the full regime when he’s having a shit day, and Matt and Sam would only get protective if Pidge had a _breakdown_.”

Well. The others might not be able to read Keith, but the reverse was clearly not the case. Shiro blew out a slow breath. “I’m not lying. They’re going to be fine. Yes, whatever happened wasn’t easy on them. But they’re _going_ to be fine.” At Keith’s pointed glare, he added, “And yes, I _will_ be checking on Pidge again later. You kept your side of things, Keith. It’s okay.”

He hit a nerve. Or something, at least. Keith paused for a few moments, very still. “...I can’t stay,” he said, this time very quietly.

Lance was better at this than he realized. He didn’t understand _how_ he knew, or even _what_ he knew really, but he’d gauged the situation pretty damn well. Shiro made a mental note to give Lance a few tips. But later. For now, the maze needed navigating. “Will you tell me why?”

“There’s no place for me,” said Keith, looking up. “I’m not taking Black from you. Or Red from Lance.” That was firm. He’d given it thought.

There was more to it though. Shiro was certain of that. He just had to poke at it carefully, until he found the angle that let Keith put words around it. “You don’t have to go right away, do you?” he tried. “I’ve only just gotten back.”

Definitely more to it. The idea that Shiro might actually want him around seemed to short circuit what was passing for a thought process. He just sat there, holding a pauldron in his hands, blinking. “...Why?”

“Well...for one thing, you saved me,” Shiro offered. “Again.”

It hadn’t been a statement that bothered Keith before. But it didn’t surprise Shiro that it bothered Keith a hell of a lot _now_. “I _killed_ you,” Keith growled. It wasn’t a particularly sane sound. “I killed you _so many times_ today.” He dropped the piece of armor he’d been cleaning, watching his hands. “I can’t get your screams out of my head, Shiro. The quintessence warping everything and the look on your face trying to kill me and how _small_ you were in the cells without food and how relieved you were that I stabbed you and how young you looked in the tanks and I still -” his voice got softer and softer but the words were still formed, silent without breath, rocking slightly back and forth.

It hadn’t been too hard to work it out from what everyone had been willing to say, and from the reactions everyone had had. Shiro got up, took off his own armor, and sat down by Keith, pulling him in for a hug. Keith still needed to wash the blood off, but it probably didn’t matter. It was as close to Shiro’s own blood as was likely to be there, and it could wait. This was what was bothering Keith, this was why the loud music and cleaning the armor so carefully.

You could say one thing for Keith, he didn’t have breakdowns over _little_ things. And as much as Shiro would have liked to, it wasn’t something he could fix. It hadn’t been a great call. It had, in fact, been something Shiro was pretty sure the Black Lion had _not_ wanted to happen. Self defense was one thing, but there was more to this than that. But clearly Keith already knew that, so why? “Will you tell me why?” he asked, keeping very careful track of his tone. No judgment, no accusation. He had to be free to examine his own motives without feeling like he needed to defend them.

Shiro was not, however, expecting Keith’s answer to be, “Because they stood between you and coming home.”

Oh. _Oh._

 _Damn_.

Keith had always come to his rescue. Always. It was mutual, and they’d joke about it sometimes, and Shiro had never really poked much at the specifics, because among other reasons that just seemed kind of ungrateful. He’d never asked for details of how Keith had come to break him out of that Garrison facility. He’d certainly never asked for details of how Keith had gotten to him when their Lions had shut down and the beasts had nearly eaten him.

...The Red Lion had been...kind of far away, now that he thought about it. Had there been a ravine? He’d only seen the distance once, taking Keith back to Red before they left that world.

It was one thing to know someone had your back, and another to know just how far they’d go. And that measure, that ‘how far’, kept increasing, because it had had to.

Shiro couldn’t say ‘but I never meant this’. Declining to examine the details did not absolve one of responsibility for a trend. The costs were getting – _had gotten_ – too high.

“...You have to stop dying, Shiro,” said Keith tonelessly, exhausted, curled against him. “I’ll come for you but I don’t know anymore if it will be enough.”

“I never died, Keith,” Shiro replied.

“No word for months,” said Keith, like reading a news report. “The Kerberos mission is declared lost. That’s all there is. I couldn’t get out there to look. Everyone says you’re dead. They clean out your quarters and put it all in boxes and lock the boxes up. There’s nothing, _nothing_ that says you’re not dead. Iverson said it to my face and I got thrown out. And I kept looking for a way to find you. I follow dreams and energy signatures and cave drawings for months because there’s nothing else and then there you are. Getting you out of the base was the easy part.”

He wasn’t bragging. Shiro could tell that much. This wasn’t an attempt to win praise. Possibly he was explaining precedent. So he held Keith closely, and listened, and waited.

“We’re thrown onto a planet and our lions don’t work and I don’t know where you are but I can hear you’re hurt,” said Keith. “That I need to find you or you’re going to die. Red’s out cold and my jetpack’s faulty and the ravine’s hundreds of feet deep, but there’s waterspouts. I can ride them for height and use what’s left in the jetpack for distance. You think Black sees some kind of leadership but I know better. Black knows I’ll come for you. It’s willing to help me, because I was helping you.”

That was...a way of looking at it, certainly, although Shiro wasn’t entirely sure it was the right one.

“We’re fighting Zarkon and we’re sure we’ve beaten him, and Voltron just _breaks_ ,” Keith went on. “And Black is down, lying down, and you’re not there. There’s no sign of you anywhere. I take Red out every day for months trying to find you, or your trail, and there’s nothing. The others move on and I’m still looking and there’s nothing. Black won’t take any of them. So I _have_ to sit there and it decides I’ll do, but I’m not you. Everyone knows I’m not you. In between nearly getting everyone else killed, I take Black out to keep looking for you.” The toneless voice cracks. “I thought I found you, but I didn’t. You knew I wasn’t up to the job and Black was yours and I left because the only one messing up was me.”

Shiro was _definitely_ going to have a conversation with that clone. He might need a decent run up to make sure it was a polite one. There was probably some insane magic-based reason for it all, but he was really having a hard time reconciling ‘person that looked exactly like himself’ with some of these choices.

“And then Lance comes and tells me it’s all going wrong and there’s something wrong with you and Pidge needs stuff of yours from before Kerberos to test her ideas so we go back to earth and I break into the storage units to get what she needs,” the tide went on. “And it’s not you I found at all. Black knew where you were and the field of ghosts that kept it from letting you go...and all I have to do is take them out for you to come back.”

“You’ve got to stop dying, Shiro.”

It was a plea. An _ashamed_ plea. Ashamed that this latest rescue had cost him enough that he wasn’t sure he could keep what he saw as his side of their partnership going. He wasn’t blind to the effect on the rest of the team. He wasn’t blind to the rather large moral problems. He just...accepted them as part of the _cost_ , and paid it anyway. Would keep paying it, until there was nothing left to pay _with_. And that was scaring him because for the first time he understood there was a cost that wasn’t just dying. A cost he might not be able to pay.

And Shiro couldn’t be horrified. He rather thought he probably should be, but...no, not really. Because he understood. Part of him wanted to yell, not at Keith but at the rest of the team, _why didn’t you catch him? Why didn’t you stop him leaving?_ Didn’t they _know_ the signs? But they didn’t. Because Shiro had always been there to translate, to intercede. That was Shiro’s side of the bargain. He’d never considered how far off the rails things might go if he weren’t there. How much _work_ the others would have to do, without him there to translate. And how little they’d realize they needed to do that work.

Well. They’d done all this for his sake. It hadn’t been a good call, and they were paying for it now, but they’d done it for his sake and he would take responsibility for that. You couldn’t really ‘fix’ things that involved dead bodies, but insofar as mending could be done, he’d do it. There was, perhaps, _some_ benefit in having survived as much as he had.

“I won’t go anywhere if you won’t,” he said to Keith, and got a full-body flinch in response.

“Don’t joke,” Keith replied flatly.

“I’m not,” said Shiro. “You need to clean up. I’m going to let you go, so you can, and I’ll wait here.”

He opened his arms, but it took a few moments for Keith to pull himself to his feet, wobble off to the shower. Only when the door had closed did Shiro blow out a long, slow breath.

Damn. Damn, damn, damn.


	12. Coda

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This chapter may seem like an odd place to end this part of the story, but by the end of it I've taken it as far as I can go without drawing some conclusions about Oriande that may not be justified by what little we got in canon about it. Rather, my intention here was to shift the focus away from the concluded arc (as Shiro is now back, and in charge) and toward where I will need to be to pick up the main storyline when S6 comes out.
> 
> I can do side plots, with some of the rest of the ensemble, when I decide what to do with them ;)

Shiro stayed with Keith that night, seated beside his bed, so that Keith could sleep holding his human hand. They hadn’t had to do that in years, but Shiro knew fragility when he saw it. Keith didn’t respond much to mere words. Actions were what mattered. Being there was what mattered. Especially right now, when what Keith was expecting was judgment and rejection, and expecting it so completely that even otherwise normal behavior could be misread.

Shiro was not surprised that Keith’s grip didn’t relax the entire night. He _was_ a bit surprised he still had the use of his fingers in the morning.

Sleep helped everyone to some degree, but it didn’t _fix_ anything as such. And Shiro didn’t expect it to. He just began with Keith, since he was right there. Spoke quietly, and with affection, making clear no, he hadn’t changed his mind, yes he _would_ be going back to his quarters, showers were nice things and kind to other people’s sense of smell, probably Hunk had a _lot_ of food left over from his baking so meet up in the galley, all right?

He’d never really...thought about it, before. What it would look like to other people. How it might be misinterpreted. And of course a lot of Keith’s behaviors _were_ misinterpreted, that was most of his problems with people. He made sense, but a very specific kind of sense that depended on you knowing where he was starting from. The other paladins came from loving homes, sometimes loving and very _large_ homes. And to Allura and Coran, Keith was probably some kind of stray galra. Allura hadn’t been surprised that Keith would kill all the clones. Shiro suspected she’d be _very_ surprised at what it had done to Keith to do so. It was still misunderstanding, just from a different direction.

Shiro thought it over as he went back to his quarters and went about what had been a normal morning routine, a lifetime or so ago. When he opened his door, he found his black paladin armor neatly placed outside his doorstep and realized he’d forgotten to take it with him. Tucked in the helmet were...photographs.

Oh.

Keith’s instincts were usually spot on. This was not an exception. Shiro put the armor away, and laid the photographs out on the desk. The glass of the frames was cracked – who knew when that had happened – but the images were undamaged and unfaded. He’d have to talk to Coran about getting them reframed. Maybe protected somehow, since there would be no way to replace them. He could have studied them for hours, but there was a passel of fragile paladins out there and probably not a _lot_ of time to get things sorted.

The paladins in the galley were not in what Shiro remembered as being the normal mode for ‘soon after waking’. They were quiet, and groggy, and...fragile. It showed in Pidge sitting between her father and her brother and leaning against both of them every few minutes. It showed in Hunk reaching out to touch people’s hands as he passed, setting out trays of things to eat or drink as if it were a feast and not just the morning. Lance looked good, but good in a ‘took quite a while to get himself ready’ way rather than a happy one. Allura and Coran seemed worried and uncertain – possibly not sure just _what_ you were supposed to do with the emotional aura in the room. And Keith sat apart – very firmly apart – and wouldn’t look at anyone.

When he saw Shiro, though, he stood up. Walked over to Shiro, and handed Shiro the black bayard before returning to his seat.

It was not how Shiro had planned to start the morning, but he conceded to himself it was a move he should’ve seen coming. And now everyone else was looking at him. So he said, “...I’ve been informed what you all did to get me back,” and watched as Lance, Allura, and Pidge lost several degrees of tension at the lack of recrimination in his tone. “I know it was hard on you. I’m sorry for that. I just wanted you all to know I’m grateful, and I’ve promised Keith I will try not to die so much.”

It wasn’t really funny, but the room was tense enough that it got a snort of laughter from Hunk and Lance. Pidge got up, hugged him hard, said, “You’d _better_ not,” and went back to her seat.

Shiro took a seat where he could see everyone, and near enough Keith that he had at least a fair shot of grabbing the younger man by the jacket if he looked like running off. Hunk took this as a signal to present breakfast, and Shiro didn’t argue with that.

“So...I’m guessing the passing of the bayard is the formal declaration of you’re in charge again?” asked Lance. “Black’s good?”

“There’s more to talk about than that,” said Shiro carefully. “I’d like to ask you all how you’d feel about asking the Lions for a change in the roster.” As the room practically _swiveled_ to stare at Keith, Shiro added, “No, he didn’t ask for it. _I’m_ bringing it up. We have a lot to consider here.”

Keith wasn’t up to the attention and wasn’t reading it correctly. Shiro could see he was interpreting this as _him_ asking to displace someone, being blamed for someone else – and probably Lance – losing their Lion, and Shiro caught Keith’s hand before he could finish getting out of his seat. “No,” said Shiro quietly. “You need to stay. This isn’t about you.”

To Shiro’s surprise and relief, Lance chipped in with, “And _I_ brought it up first. Don’t make me stun you, Keith.”

It wasn’t the most eloquent answer, but from Lance it was enough to freeze Keith’s flight instinct. Shiro gave Lance a small approving nod where Keith wouldn’t see, and got a little drink-packet salute in return.

“It’s about _me,”_ said Allura. “We still have the imperial civil war to deal with. I very much want to understand Lotor’s position in this. We need to choose a side, and so far he has the only unique position and is the only one to ask or offer alliance. And one the coalition might be sympathetic to. Shiro raised the concern that if I remain as the Blue Lion’s pilot, it allies Voltron as well as the coalition to the Empire’s cause.”

“Now, hold on just a minute,” said Lance, not so cheerful now. “We are _not_ going to just drop you off in Galra central command and leave you there.”

Keith, to Shiro’s surprise, interjected with, “She probably wouldn’t be. You could still berth the castleship there, and the Lions. She’d have a transponder to call you back if anything happened. It couldn’t be real, Lance. Allura’s the only one that can work the teludav. It’s just….symbols.” he said the word as if it meant ‘illusions’.

“And if we do anything it needs to be a group consensus,” said Shiro. “Bluntly...Allura has a lot she wants to explore and it _could_ affect her availability to pilot. I’m not asking her to step down for that, I’m just asking if she’s willing to consider it – and if so, if the rest of you are willing to consider another shuffle.” He looked over at Lance. “I can tell you, even if you’re willing to return to the formation I’m more familiar with, there will be some changes. You’ve all grown a lot.”

“Do we even know if the Lions will put up with another shuffle?” asked Hunk. “I mean Pidge and me, we’re pretty well set. You’re probably not talking about either of us. But Lance’s been our second for a while now, and...”

“And I’m not sure that any of the Lions would trust me again,” said Keith quietly.

“Black trusts me,” said Shiro firmly. “I trust all of you. The Lions will decide what to do on their end, if we ask them. Leave that alone for now and focus on whether we’re going to ask them. Allura will need freedom but also support. If we can’t provide that unless she stays in Blue, then that’s that.”

“And if the Lions _won’t_ agree to shuffle?” asked Keith quietly.

“Then we’ll discuss other options,” Shiro answered, giving Keith a direct look. He knew Keith meant ‘if Red won’t take me back’, which Keith was a lot more worried about than Shiro at this point. And he _would_ talk it over, if the Lions really wouldn’t take Keith back. There were certainly some very important options that would keep Keith nearby, at least. Shiro agreed fully with Lance on that; Keith was in _no_ shape to go back to the Blades. “For now, let’s stick to ‘is it a good idea to ask’. Allura?”

“I’m ...afraid I can’t say for certain,” Allura admitted. “I’ve had only a day or so. We would need to test his intentions. And I don’t think the war is going to wait for that.”

“Are we willing to help him retake planets currently held by warlords?” asked Shiro, watching the group. “The warlords may be unpleasant people, and the planets may be uninhabited. I doubt Lotor’s going to open with requests to reconquer civilian populations.”

It was not a question anyone seemed happy to hear. After a few moments of silence, Shiro sighed. “All right. Guess we go to Galra central command. The only way we’re going to get through this is to get started.” He nodded toward Allura. “When you’re ready, then.”

Keith spoke up one more time. “If we’re done _here_. Pidge, are we?”

No one could miss the sudden closed-off expression on Pidge’s face. “Yeah. The data’s been sifted. There was just the one ship. Reports were sent to Haggar. As far as I can tell, she’s the one that set Operation Kuron up, and it’s her...” Pidge trailed off tiredly, looking for the words, “cadre, her people, that ran it.”

“Then we’re done here,” said Shiro firmly.

~*~

“I told you I won’t make someone give up their Lion,” said Keith shortly. “Why did you ask them that? Why ask Allura that?”

“I’m _told_ ,” said Shiro, emphasizing the word to suggest that maybe he didn’t entirely _believe_ what he was told, “that you started training with the Blade of Marmora to learn more about your galra heritage. Is that true?”

Keith’s mouth snapped shut. He wasn’t entirely back to himself, but he was close enough to it not to admit to reasons that might be mocked or misunderstood. So he said, tightly, ‘yes.’

“And you told me Lotor’s half Altean,” said Shiro. “Honerva’s son. How many people of Altean heritage is Allura going to be likely to meet?”

Keith raised his hands in irritated surrender. “There’s the whole ‘is he on her side’ question. I told you about the other universe, too.”

“And that she saw through them,” Shiro nodded. “Keith...I honestly think Allura’s going to need _time_. Above and beyond the Coalition deciding whether this new Empire is a friend, she’s going to need time to decide where _she_ stands with regard to maybe the only other Altean she’ll ever meet. If you can step down to explore your heritage, so can she. You’ll note I didn’t ask her to. I asked if she’d be _willing_ to. No orders. She’ll decide. Nobody’s forcing anybody into or out of anything.”

The look Keith gave him said, very clearly, that nobody was fooling anybody in this vicinity, either, and Keith knew damn well what ulterior motives were going on even if he had no idea why the effort was being made. Shiro just smiled. “I’d appreciate it if you stayed, Keith. With or without a Lion, I think you’re the only one here other than Coran who may have any idea what Allura will be dealing with. She’ll need someone to talk to who _isn’t_ Lotor, someone who can stand up for her to the others.”

 _That_ caught Keith by surprise. “You do remember how _really well_ she took finding out I’m galra, right?”

“And Lotor is half galra, too,” Shiro replied. He put a hand on Keith’s shoulder. “Just...consider it, all right? I know you prefer a more active approach to life, but sometimes perspectives are valuable things to have around.”

Keith made a face. “Fine,” he growled. It meant, _you win_. “I’ll be in the training room.”

~*~

Pidge was awake, so while Allura flew them back to Galra central command (and that was still taking getting used to, his last visit hadn’t been pleasant), Shiro dropped in on her.

Matt and Sam were still staying near, though not hovering protectively as they’d been the night before. Pidge didn’t look _happy_ , but she was awake enough to give Shiro a proper hello. And, “I’m guessing you’ve kinda noticed we’re a mess.”

“Just a bit,” Shiro nodded. “But thank you, for your help getting me out.”

Pidge sort of half-sat, half bounced on her unmade bed. “You _really_ wanted Keith to take over for you?”

“I’m getting that that was more of a surprise than I thought it would be,” said Shiro dryly. “In my defense I thought I’d have more time to get him ready.”

Pidge adjusted her glasses, looking up at him with an expression that suggested she would _never_ have guessed him to be so stupid. It didn’t help Shiro to realize that he’d have to ask for which of several possible reasons she thought that.

When Pidge was hurting, she was _blunt_. “He’s never going to be,” she said flatly. “And I don’t mean he’s stupid and I don’t mean he can’t lead, Shiro. I mean for him to take over you have to be gone, and he’s _never_ going to be ready for that. You were clever this morning. I agree that Allura might need some time to evaluate things, and _maybe_ that means we get our old roster back. But you need to let go of this idea that Keith would stay anywhere near the rest of us if you’re not here, and you _really_ need to let go of the idea he’d be in any shape to run the paladins. Honestly, you may need to let go of the idea he’d be in any shape to leave his _room_.”

It was amazing how blunt words could feel so sharp. Shiro snapped before thinking, “Do I need to let go of the idea that he has _any_ friends on this team besides me, Pidge?”

“Friendship goes in two directions, Shiro,” Pidge retorted. “You weren’t here. He ran us into a heavy-atmosphere world that screwed with normal sensors. _Two minutes_ and I could’ve had our scanners adjusted, but _no_. So we run in _blind_ and we get _separated_ and we get _lost_. And nearly killed. Because he didn’t want to be there, he wanted to go look for _you_. He thinks you’re upset with him, he goes off to train with the Blades. We get _overwhelmed_ and we can’t form Voltron _because you’re upset with him_. You tell me, does that sound like he’s our friend? Or does it sound like he’s _your_ friend?”

So help him, Shiro was not going to get into a shouting match with a fifteen year old. Even – especially – if she had a point. Saying that he’d had no idea Keith would take it that hard just seemed...blind, and oblivious. Apparently it hadn’t been news to anyone but him. Matt, and Sam, were just sitting in chairs listening. This wasn’t their fight, though Matt looked as if he might have a few thoughts on it. “What’s your solution, Pidge?” Shiro asked, making himself stay calm and level.

Pidge waved a hand. Dismissing. “He’s fine in Red. If the Lion will take him back, that’s fine. And it’s cute you promised to never die again but we’re both aware that’s not a promise you’re going to have a choice about. So be _smart_ about it, Shiro. Go ahead and train him if you really want to, but accept that unless the next time you die you leave a verifiable, identifiable body we can _bury_ , he’s going to leave the team to look for you. And if you _do_ leave a body he’s going to need space to grieve, and either way in the meantime we need someone to run this team. You train _them_ , too.”

“I’m going a step further than that, Pidge,” said Shiro. “I’m going to teach _all_ of you. Black will decide, if and when a next time happens.”

“Black better accept that I will _tie Keith to a chair_ before I let round three happen,” said Pidge, irritated. “Yesterday was a wakeup call for more than just you or him. I’m _not_ doing something like that again. Keith didn’t want to lead, either time, and I think it’s about time we accepted that it’s not just the Lions who should get to choose who’s on the team.”

She...wasn’t wrong. She wasn’t wrong to be angry, or hurt. She wasn’t wrong to want a say in who she worked with. She wasn’t _wrong_ about any of it. But because she _was_ angry, and hurt, it wasn’t the time to suggest that maybe a solution included giving Keith a home. So Shiro just said, “I agree. I’ll work on it,” and made his way out.

A few seconds later, Matt followed him, and closed Pidge’s door behind them. “She’ll calm down, you know,” he offered, a little apologetically. “I think she’s upset that she broke down. She hates ‘looking girly’. I mean I tell her it’s fine and nobody thinks any less of her, but…” he shrugged.

“She’s not wrong,” sighed Shiro. “It would be easier if she were, but she’s not.”

“She _is_ wrong about one thing,” said Matt. “I’ve seen how Keith is around people that aren’t his friends. People he _knows_ aren’t his friends. This _is_ home, as far as he’s concerned. Even if he’s not welcome in it, or you’re not here.”

Shiro blinked. How...where the hell did Matt get the data for _that_ conclusion? Not that it wasn’t welcome, but -

Matt just smiled at Shiro. “I’ve spent a lot more time out in the universe than you or Pidge have,” he said. “The rebellion’s full of different species. Everyone’s got their quirks, their ways of showing things. It’s not hard to get the hang of once you realize you need to look. I’m the only human on Olia’s ship. For a long time I was the only human in the whole _rebellion._ Nobody knew how to deal with me, and I didn’t know how to deal with anyone. We all had to learn. I’ll admit, I made assumptions about Keith at first. In my defense, he pretty much _wanted_ me to. But seeing him around here’s put a lot of things in perspective.” He pursed his lips. “You know...Kolivan’s solution might work for Pidge, too. Do you think it’s possible to have her running escort for cargo ships for a while? I think if she sees how different people can be, she might realize Keith’s not as alien as she currently thinks.”

“Not sure we’ll be able to, with the chaos all around,” said Shiro. “But if the opportunity arises, sure. What about Sam?”

“He wants to go back to Earth,” said Matt. “Especially with the current mess, he’s sure Earth’s going to get hit soon and wants to warn them. It’s a matter of _getting_ him there, though. Ideally with enough evidence to convince people he’s not insane.”

Shiro nodded. “Well. Pidge should be able to get him _that_ at least. If we have to we can send Green through a wormhole and stay cloaked until Earth.”

“Only as long as Pidge stays _in_ the lion,” said Matt. “I adore her, but there’s no way the old guys running the garrison would take Pidge seriously. Better for the whole universe if she doesn’t have to break out of a holding cell to get back here.”

“Agreed,” said Shiro. “And thanks.”

~*~

It was, admittedly, a relief not to have to use that dinky little pistol. Whatever Black had been trying to tell him, it hadn’t worked. And now it didn’t matter; he wasn’t Black’s paladin anymore.

Wasn’t _any_ kind of paladin anymore. And this time he didn’t really feel like one, either. He’d pushed up hard against something, on the clone ship. Some kind of ...limit, or line, that he hadn’t expected. In his mind it hadn’t seemed too different from anything else. Do this, rescue Shiro. He’d certainly done crazier things. Kind of a long list of crazier things, really. But he still couldn’t think about the fighting on the clone ship. He’d start hearing their screams, their whimpers, and he’d start shaking again.

Maybe that was why Shiro seemed to be inventing reasons to keep a lionless ex-paladin around. It wasn’t as if Allura needed him. She knew herself to a frankly enviable degree. Knew her people, too. Keith could be around galra all day, every day, for weeks, and learn only that galra were not particularly good conversationists who were easily irritated. Which, given complaints often leveled against himself, wasn’t exactly news.

But it was true that he wasn’t ready...that he didn’t really _want_ to leave. The castleship was the only home he’d had in a long time, and the only family he had was here. And Keith felt... _off_. Out of kilter, somehow. Kolivan would just send him to the rebellion again, probably, and he didn’t particularly feel up to dealing with the resentful glares of a ship full of strangers for the next six months yet. The paladins might be justifiably pissed off at him, but they’d _probably_ have the courtesy to give him a few hours to get off the ship if it came to it, and the kindness to decide to tell him while he was awake.

And while he thought it all out, Keith’s body handled the motions of keeping him un-zapped by the laser bees in progressively more difficult programs. He’d had a lot of practice with the odd weight of the luxite Marmora blade – very like a khopesh, really, weighted near the tip for a harder swing. The bayard-blade Red had always given him, and Black for a while, was weighted near the hilt, so that the push-dagger perpendicular grip could parry heavy blades without straining the wrist.

“I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised you’ve gotten a lot better while you were away,” said Lance from the doorway. “That’s like...what, six levels above where you were when you left? You’re a pain in the ass to compete with.”

Habit born of being knocked _hard_ on his ass if he took his eyes off his enemy, Keith finished the program he was on before lowering his sword to face Lance. “So don’t,” he advised flatly.

Lance’s eyes narrowed, insulted. “What, just never try to get better?” he said, and the red bayard formed its broadsword in his hand. “I don’t _think_ so, buddy.”

Lance had a way of saying ‘buddy’ that could make it rhyme with ‘fuckwit’. But Keith was not in the mood for it. The luxite blade shrank to a dagger, and he sheathed at his back. “I didn’t say that,” he said, stepping away from the practice zone.

“Then what _were_ you saying?” asked Lance, approaching. The sword stayed ready in his hand, and it was pointed at Keith. “Shouldn’t try to compete with _you_ , oh god of the sword? Darling pilot of the Garrison? Lost cause, huh?”

Keith was aware Lance was trying to pick a fight. He had no particular idea _why_ , not because there was no reason but because he could think of too many and had no idea how to narrow down the options. But he wasn’t going to fight. He’d broken things enough. There was nothing to gain by rising to the bait.

Lance was in armor to practice in. The punch connected solidly. From his new position on his ass on the floor, Keith looked up along the red broadsword. Lance’s expression was...strange. Like Keith had …

… stopped being human.

Allura had looked at him like that, after they all found out he was part galra. He’d thought at the time someone would look at an actual wolf in sheep’s clothing like that. It’s woolly, it baas like the other sheep, and then you find out it’s much more dangerous than a sheep and the wool’s just for show. Keith wondered if Lance knew he didn’t actually control this situation. That there were a dozen ways for Keith to take Lance’s weapon and kill him with it. He wondered if that mattered since he had no intention of using any of them. Control could be given, as well as taken.

Then the broadsword disappeared and Lance put away his bayard. “How’s your Spanish, Keith?” he asked tiredly. “Because I have to admit, I am getting incredibly fucking tired of _thinking_ we’re both speaking the same language and then realizing we’re going right past each other.”

Keith blinked. “...I don’t think it would help,” he said. “I picked up enough Mexican to get by but your Cuban accent turns it to gibberish.”

“Arizona,” Lance sighed. “Right. Couldn’t be from Florida, could you. It’s not _that_ hard, you know. I can watch British shows and Australian shows and -” he paused. “Okay, I admit the Australian shows mostly I watch the subtitles. But you get the idea.”

“New Mexico,” Keith corrected. “And more ‘where I ended up’ than ‘where I’m from’. Garrison.”

“If I ask you where you’re _from_ and you tell me ‘Daibazaal’, I am absolutely going to punch you again,” Lance warned.

“Then don’t ask,” Keith advised, getting up. “Because it doesn’t really matter, anyway.”

To Keith’s absolute surprise, Lance reached out and put a hand on his shoulder, the way Shiro often did. He fought the instinct to step back, out of reach. That punch had very much connected; he’d have a pretty solid bruise soon. “Friends 101, Keith. Little details matter. I don’t know anything about you. Nobody on this ship does, except for Shiro. Now...I’m not going to try prying it out of you. But I want you to file that away, okay? It helps _us_ understand _you_ if we have _some_ kind of framework for how you think.”

Keith _did_ step back, then. Not quite intentionally. More instinctive. What people knew about you could (and, by the track record of his life, usually _would_ ) be used against you. The fewer weapons others had, the less they could hurt you. The paladins had a solid list of reasons to want to. Preservation instincts strongly suggested it wasn’t a good idea to give them the means to make it hurt more than it already would. A solid right hook was on the light end of possible outcomes.

Lance let him step back, just sort of...watching. “Yeah. I kind of figured that might happen. You and Shiro must’ve been friends for years before Kerberos ever took off.”

Keith just nodded. _That_ at least didn’t seem to need to be a secret. If anything it was kind of surprising that it wasn’t understood as a given already.

“….I don’t want you dead,” said Lance at last, as if it were the conclusion to some ongoing internal discussion. “I think you should probably get that clear. I don’t want you dead, and I don’t want to kill you. I don’t always _like_ you, and sometimes I really want to punch you a few times, and if I can ever out-fight or out-fly you I will throw a _party_. But that’s as far as it goes. You with me so far?”

He wasn’t actually certain he _was_ , because on the whole the entire conversation had become more than a bit bizarre, but Keith nodded anyway.

“Okay,” said Lance. “Just so we’re clear on that, first. Second thing. I’ve enjoyed flying Red. He can really _move_. Joy to fly. But if Allura steps down from Blue and we have to talk to the Lions about a new roster, I won’t mind flying Blue again. And I honestly hope she takes me back. I was Takashi’s second and you know what? It frankly kind of sucked. Which you know, actually, you tried it too. Shiro’s willing to listen to me if I’ve got something to say, and I’m pretty sure he doesn’t give a fig which Lion I’m in when I say it. That’s what matters to me. And ...I don’t _want_ to be the kind of Second you are to Shiro. I didn’t mind being _yours_. But I don’t want to be his. I don’t think that’d go very well. Whether Red takes you back or not, I think he does need _you_ as his second. He flat out doesn’t know _how_ that job would work with anyone else in it.” He gestured with one hand, indicating the air between himself and Keith. “This, what I’m doing right now? This is how _I_ second. It’s what we needed because Takashi was even worse at communicating than you are. I don’t need to be in Red to do this, and being in Red hasn’t helped it. So I’m not going to sweat it, you understand?”

Keith nodded, slowly. “...I didn’t ask him to do that,” he said, just to be sure. “I told him _not_ to.”

“Yeah, well. You handed him the bayard, so that changes where the final word goes,” said Lance. “But I saw how you took it, so I’m making sure you understand before hand. If it happens, I won’t mind. You won’t be taking anything.”

“...Thanks,” was all Keith could say to that. He didn’t _deserve_ Red, but he couldn’t deny he badly missed him. There weren’t a lot of points in his life Keith could point to unequivocally and say ‘that was awesome’. Flying the Red Lion was one of them.

“Second,” said Lance. “I’m not your enemy. I’m...kind of getting that you’ve been trying to tell me you’re not _mine_ for a while now, so this is me telling you ‘same’. We’ve been a good team now and then. We might manage to be friends, eventually. You don’t want to tell me about yourself, fine. I get it. So I’ll open. Cards on the table. You don’t understand, you ask me why. I’ll tell you. You can return the favor as and when you’re ready. Understood?”

Keith frowned. One hand raised to touch his face, which was probably bruising nicely right now.

“I didn’t say you’re not occasionally a pain in the ass,” said Lance. “And you didn’t explain yourself either.”

“So if I _don’t_ explain myself you’re going to try to deck me?” asked Keith tonelessly.

Lance’s lips pressed together. “I just wanted to spar. I already _know_ you’re better with a sword than me. You didn’t need to rub it in.”

Keith blinked. “I didn’t?”

“Then what the hell _did you mean_?” said Lance. “See that’s the thing. You don’t have to explain yourself but it’s _really fucking annoying_ to try to read your mind, okay?”

No. Not working. Keith backed away. Shook his head and left the training room quickly, before whatever the fuck was going on got weirder and-or more violent.

Lance sighed and addressed the heavens. “That _almost_ worked. Guess I’m going to have to ask Shiro what the hell just happened.”

~*~

Allura wore the solemn, serious expression she defaulted to when thinking hard about things, as she piloted the castleship into the patrolled space of Galra central command.

Nothing was cut and dried anymore. Not that it ever really had been, that much, but now far less so. She had no idea what to think about a lot of very important issues, no idea what to feel, and was very very aware that whatever her ultimate decision, it would affect a lot of lives.

In and around the business of a princess and a leader and a paladin of Voltron was the business of any young person presented with a kindred spirit. And she could tell herself now was _not_ the time all she wanted, but it didn’t change anything.

Lotor was…. _sincere_. She hadn’t expected that. Oh, he was mannered and reserved and wore the Polite Mask much as she did herself, you couldn’t really be royalty without developing those traits. But he was _sincere_ , and that was not something he could have gotten from his parents. Not as he knew them, anyway. He’d been underestimated and sidelined for the whole of a very long life by Galra who thought his Altean blood made him small and weak and he’d made up for it by being observant and cunning and clever. He knew the flaws in the Empire because he himself had survived by _exploiting_ those flaws. And now the Empire was his to change, he had a lot of ideas on how to do it.

It sounded like an impossible dream. The Galra had been rampaging across the galaxies for ten thousand years. To upend that overnight seemed...nonsensical.

And yet.

As a docking bay opened to receive the castleship, someone stepped onto the bridge. “Princess,” said Keith, behind her. The tone suggested greeting. She didn’t turn around; she had to focus to bring the ship in.

“Keith,” she replied, just as neutrally.

“...I have to ask a favor.”

Allura blinked. That was new. But she didn’t answer until she’d settled the castleship into its berth. _Then_ she turned to face him.

That he was wearing neither Marmora armor nor Paladin armor wasn’t too big a surprise. The solid bruise on his cheek was. “Are you all right?” she asked, frowning.

“What?” asked Keith. “Oh. It’s nothing. Training. I need you to take me with you. Will you?”

Training with _what_? - wait, what? “I beg your pardon?” asked Allura.

“Lotor wouldn’t let anyone come with you before,” said Keith. “I need you to let me come with you next time, if you will.”

“You do realize I am perfectly capable of taking care of myself, I hope,” said Allura, stiffly. She’d had enough of this silliness from Lance. If Keith started _too_ -

Except he was looking at her as if he’d had no idea why she would think that. “Yes. I know,” he said. “I’ve seen you fight.”

“Then why?” asked Allura. “This is part of my duty. It isn’t part of yours.”

“The Blade of Marmora has broken the Empire,” said Keith. “They want to have a hand in choosing the direction the galra people move in. I asked them not to take what we’re doing here as a sign they should choose Lotor and they agreed to wait, but...since I’m _here_ , I’d like to observe. If you’ll let me.”

It... _seemed_ like a reasonable request. But at the same time, “You can’t be starting any conflicts, you know.”

“Which means I should be with you, where the official statements and things are, and not trying to break into the central computer, which would be the usual Blade approach,” Keith replied. “Right?”

Again, it _seemed_ reasonable. “...Go with me as what?” she asked. “I doubt you want to introduce yourself as a Blade.”

“Your guard will work,” said Keith. “Lotor has sentries and soldiers all over this base. It’s _his_ base. As a visiting ….royal...thing...” he made a gesture that meant words were not being good friends with him, “you’re probably allowed _some_ kind of formal backup. Trust isn’t something politicians hand out lightly. You probably shouldn’t either.”

“My personal guard would probably not be allowed to join in the conversation,” Allura pointed out.

“I tell you what my concerns are before, or afterward,” Keith offered. “You work it into the conversation whenever you want. I’ll stay out of the way and just listen, unless something goes wrong and you need help.”

“Which I will _ask for_ ,” Allura clarified. “Or someone will have a hand over my mouth.” This could go so very, very wrong. Not that she thought Lotor would begrudge her a guard – Keith had a point there, as a princess she did have the right to an entourage and personal security. No, what was worrying her was the idea that Lotor would find this so amusing he’d poke at Keith’s resolve just to see if it would hold, and then possibly be able to win concessions from Allura when Keith inevitably exploded. It wasn’t that Keith couldn’t be quiet. It was that Keith _not_ being quiet tended to be unpredictable, sudden, and dangerous, and none of that was helpful.

And Keith had been introduced as Black Paladin. Now Shiro was back, that had changed. Lotor would find _that_ interesting, too.

But all Keith said was, “All right.”

Allura sighed. “Under most circumstances I’d ask Coran to show you where the uniforms are,” she said. “But Lotor already knows you as a paladin. Get him to show you where the armory is, though. If you’re not going to be an open member of the Marmora, you probably want a weapon that isnt a complete giveaway.”

Keith nodded and left the bridge again, and so didn’t see Allura’s worried sigh. _So_ many ways this could go wrong.


End file.
